This installation was originally conceived as a direct means of evoking feelings about the condition of the contemporary world. Initially its theme was the collapse of the communist regimes of central and eastern Europe, post 1989. The oil barrels and bins were intended to embody the impersonal hardness of historical and economic forces and suggest their capacity to junk lives in their wake. The sounds within the barrels animated the interplay of a multiplicity voices and moods associated with those historical events. The act of stone throwing was intended to initiate a physical as well as intellectual and emotional interaction with our work. Spectators became participants. After all, throwing stones conjures aggression, skill and the heightened senses of the hunt. It can be fun, like at a fairground coconut shy. These are ways-of-being and enquiry we thought relevant to the openness of the contemporary gallery space. In the selection of sounds, of voices, of moods, the installation became a re-ordering of a range mediated messages we considered relevant. We plundered media archives and invite our audiences to reassemble them almost in an act of sport.
