People Watching is an installation consisting of three rooms, a living room, dining room, and kitchen, and six figures made of scrap-wood as well as an archival video work. It is a part of a larger research into the theatre involved in the performance of a self. The self as a performance can be understood to be all the aspects of the self that are presented externally. The six scrap-wood figures exist in within their own constructed domestic space consisting of a living room, dining room and kitchen. The figures, in a similar fashion to puppets, essentially function as human surrogates, having the form and potential to be recognised and understood as human and existing in a human space but without any sort of will or desires. The puppet is an inanimate object. It only exists as an entity who can be interrogated while performing and is transformed back into an inanimate object when the performance ends. Within their theatrical space, their lifeless bodies are manoeuvred from room to room placed in relation with one another to give the idea that they are not lifeless puppets but living performers with relationships, personalities, and wants.
On the television placed in the living room, a compilation of clips of government-made and owned footage from the United States National Archives plays. Each clip features one or more subjects as they behave presumably as they usually do, realise that they are being filmed, and subsequently recompose themselves with the knowledge that they are being watched. In this moment, the subject, like the puppet, having become aware that they are being watched, becomes fully cognizant of their performance and must pretend to be who they are like actors on a stage. This new surveilled self is attempts emulate un-surveilled self that existed moments prior. The self then is shown to be a theatrical object.