Current Work

October 2010 to March 2011

I took a break from an oral history work to become a yoga teacher in Nepal; I also stayed in a Tibetan monastery in Nepal for a one month Buddhist retreat. I then took up a cycling tour of Laos and ended up in Thailand for 2 months practicing yoga and meditation. I will shortly post some blog pieces about my time away.

June to September 2010

This spring I carried out a content analysis of 10% of the logs interviewers created for the One and Other oral history collection of 2400 participants who stood on the empty 4th plinth in Trafalgar square last summer.

I identified 10 typologies of individuals which took part in the One and Other project, namely:

- The artist- performance/painter/sculptor/designer/writer/photographer/filmmaker/musician/dancer.

- The activist – human and animal rights, anarchy, environment, anti-war, anti-globalization.

- The ordinary individual wanting to do something out of the ordinary (housewife/policeman/fireman/city worker, student).

- The fundraiser/campaigner (usually connected to a charity or fund).

- The teacher/educator – teacher/lecturer/journalist/lawyer/doctor/civil servant etc.

- The spiritual – priest/yogi/hermit/supporter/lay person of particular religion/traveller.

- The survivor – speaking out about their experience (MS/ME or Parkinson’s sufferer, cancer/heart attack/war survivor/mental health/addiction.

- The mourner – using the plinth to express grief of about to or having lost someone, as public act of remembering.

- The job-seeker – seeking employment, made redundant, homeless.

- The transgendered – expressing gender that matches their identity rather than their birth sex.

On the basis of this categories I have written a proposal for Wellcome Trust to create content for a website to promote the Oral History collection. The proposal was accepted and I have thus far selected and interviewed 20 individuals, 2 people per the above typologies. The transcripts and relating sound edited clips will go to inform the content of the website that will be launched in mid October 2010.

March 2010

Verusca conducted in-depth oral history follow-up interviews with a selected number of ‘plinthers’ from Antony Gormley’s One and Other project in which 2400 people stood on the empty 4th plinth and chose to represent themselves in whatever way they wanted. The interview material will go to inform part of the 700 page long One and Other book which will be launched in September 2010.

Click here to find out more about the One and Other project:
One and Other