Eavesdroppings

A work-in-progress by Una Walker

Late Night Art
Thursday 4th December 2025
6-8pm

Eavesdroppings (a work-in-progress)

For this work the artist visited over twenty of the remaining passages couverts de Paris, the cultural significance of which was highlighted in Walter Benjamin’s unfinished 1930s Arcades Project, where she made a series of four channel field recordings. The audio files were then uploaded to a speech to text app which transcribed fragments of incidental conversations captured by the recordings. These fragments, mainly in French, but also Greek and Arabic, were then converted to English using translation software. The resultant texts hint at possible narratives but are detached from context or formal structure allowing many possible arrangements.

Eavesdroppings in its first iteration will present these fragmented and overlapping conversations as a video and four channel audio installation.

Una Walker is an artist and writer based at Flax Art Studios, Belfast. She has exhibited extensively in Ireland and internationally, making site and context specific installation, audio and video works, and works on paper. Many of these works have dealt with aspects of individual memory and on the construction of collective memory. Site specific installation works have been constructed in diverse locations including: military fortifications in Ireland, Scotland and Finland: a derelict factory in Poland; and a cathedral in Wales. Her audio and video works have been included on numerous broadcasting platforms and in international festivals including In Sonora, Madrid (2024) and Earthrising, IMMA (2025).