neonascent

I’m in the process of blogging descriptions of a few of my older artworks, for the sake of completeness and a sense of progression. This is the first, there are more to come which will be similarly titled…

Unattached - 2004

This work was exhibited as what appeared to be a normal, unplugged telephone on a plinth. The quick dial buttons had labels such as “The Queen”, “Elvis”, and “Mum” thanks to a friend, and many people at the exhibition thought that that was all there was to it.

There was in fact more going on, and those who jokingly lifted the receiver to their ear and said hello, or those who had seen others using it and tried it themselves found that there was a conversation going on over the phone. True to an aim at sincere and truthful artwork, I had rung up girls that I liked, and recorded the conversation as I asked them out. The result was that I had about 10 minutes of recorded conversation of getting rejected. :S These conversations were burned onto a CD, and played through a discman connected to a homebuilt short-distance FM transmitter, to be picked up a radio wired into the apparently disconnected telephone (The radio power was patched through the phone so that the radio was only on while the phone was “off the hook”).

The willful masochism of ringing these girls and getting rejected was one of the most draining experiences I can remember!