Later work began questioning the spatial limitations and social conventions imposed on performance with a series of interventions in public and televisual spaces, including an impromptu interrogation of former UK Home Secretary Michael Howard on the Channel 5 show, The Wright Stuff.
This performance lecture described Deacon’s search for television footage of himself as a member of his school choir on an edition of Harry Secombe’s religious program Highway.
Deacon also become known for his works in political biography, with a series of performances on the lives of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell (2004–08) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005).
In 2005, he received a Live Art Development Agency commission for the film They Used to Call it a White Elephant which was screened as part of the Variety season at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK.
In 2009, he began initial work on what would become his first feature-length documentary film on the life of the late US American performance artist and filmmaker Stuart Sherman.
The completed film, Spectacle: A Portrait of Stuart Sherman saw its first screening in 2013 in a curatorial collaboration between Performa and the 'Rituals of Rented Island' Exhibition at the Whitney Museum, New York.