Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson worked in the Boston area and filed the first telephone patent on February 14, 1876. This apparatus mimics as close as possible the way we communicate face to face and joins the photographic era, adding to the list of inventions "reproducing reality". The healthy digressions that Bell describes as his non-linear inventive methodology are a source of inspiration for our project.
We depart from Bell and Watson's experiments (and lives) in order to work as a creative team appropriating historical material. We fundamentally believe that one of the principal functions of art resides in its communicative possibilities. Hence, each piece in this exhibition, "I heard two people striking up a conversation about the injustice of working together" proposes an analysis of different properties involved in reciprocal communication and in collaboration. We are interested in translating the relationship that is integral to the telephonic experience (basically aural) into a variety of sensorial media.
This installation is composed of six elements:
1) A series of three drawings that mixes various source material and drawing techniques can be seen through the gallery's storefront window. Final Frontier, Westward Ho!, and The Wave of a Hand juxtapose images from different avenues of research during our three year collaboration. The drawings include images of Clark Kent/Superman, the Telestar (telecommunication's first satellite), Philadelphia's Liberty Hall, Apache helicopters carrying Dymaxion Houses, protestors, the logo of the Telephone Pioneers of America, Wendover Willy, etc... We collaborated in the making of these drawings via an exquisite corpse methodology where each of us added an element to the drawing while following a specific conversation.
2) The second piece, Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you, is a silent video-loop projected on the wall. The video is a montage of various cell phone video recordings made by us, walking up and down stairs trying to find each other. The title of this piece recuperates the first sentence transmitted by telephone between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson.
3) The third work in this exhibition is Milton Ten, a scaled-down wooden reproduction of one of Alexander Graham Bell's tetrahedron kites. This sculpture recalls the inverted form of Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk and the transparency of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. The title corresponds to the telephone number of Buckminster Fuller's childhood home in Boston, MA. The kite operates more as a working model than as a monument due to its weighted materiality and its diminutive scale.
4) A two channels audio component entitled, Conversation was then carried on for about half an hour with the utmost freedom, and the experiment closed mixes several sound bytes and MP-3 files downloaded from online archives with the reading of Alexander Graham Bell's address to the Telephone Pioneers' Association in 1911. This speech is read aloud in the gallery space by a Mac computer, adding an element of modernization in communication technologies and disconnect to the appropriation of a historical moment.
5) The fifth work, Notes on Speech, is a copper printing plate, etched by acid with a diagram highlighting the non-reciprocal relationship of prisoners and telephone companies, specifically the outrageous collect call rates charged to the prisoner's family members and the telephone companies outsourcing of customer service jobs within prisons. State governments, private prisons, and telephone corporations have a long (and well hidden) history of exploiting inmates whose main connection to their families is through the phone.
6) The last piece in this exhibition is an event, Flying Elisha, which will be held on February 14, 2009 at noon in commemoration of the 133rd anniversary of Bell's submission of the telephone patent. We will attempt to fly kites at the nearby park from GASP. The kites are stenciled in gray with the name, Elisha, referencing the other inventor of the telephone Elisha Gray, whom also submitted a caveat on February 14, 1876. Hundreds of lawsuits and years later, the "true" inventor of the telephone is still heavily debated today. The text on the kites also alludes to the prophet Elijah, whom in some cultures is credited with bringing bad weather and thus bad news. Hopefully we'll have great weather and more importantly a gay old time celebrating Valentine's Day!