Some people collect rare prints or limited-edition trainers; Gregor Petrikovič has a “silly archive of human interactions”. The Slovak-British filmmaker and artist began his ‘conversation collection’ on an old iPhone eight years ago during smoking breaks between lectures while studying philosophy at Durham University. “My friends were saying cool things I knew I wouldn’t remember. I asked if they’d mind if I recorded.”

Petrikovič started to record conversations in pubs and club toilets, with no real intention. His education took him to London, where he was awarded the Burberry Design Scholarship at the Royal College of Art and enrolled in the graduate photography programme. However, it wasn’t until he moved to New York for a residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program that he realised there was something in his growing archive of chats.

He had just started running the audio through software that spat out “transcripts of real life” when he had a studio visit with a curator from the Czech Republic. “He saw them in the corner, shoved against the wall, and asked what they were. I told him they were scripts of life that I was recording,” Petrikovič recalls. “He’s like, I think there’s something there.”