THERE’S NO OTHER EXCEPT ME was a durational performance installation, originally performed for SHOUT Festival 2016 and hosted by Birmingham Open Media. This work provided the early primer for VODA and Dream Operator.

The one night only performance invited its audience to respond to the potential of unanticipated dialogues through telephonic interactions. From the history of LGBTQI+ and civil rights movements, the artist reconfigured speech acts into informal conversations of universal affirmation and emancipation direct to the receiver via telephone within a curtained booth. These solitary, emotive and undisclosed personal exchanges create intimate discourse with only the technology of the telephone as the physical conduit between artist and participant.

The title of the work is taken from the words of Oz, the wizard, on being discovered as the invisible interlocutor behind the curtain to Dorothy.

This work was first performed shortly after the Pulse Nightclub Orlando Terror Attack 2016. Inadvertently, it became a facility of sanctuary and reflection for the LGBTQI+ community in attendance at the festival.