Telephone was an event produced in 2009 in collaboration with Catherine Lan.
Catherine and I were classmates in an interdisciplinary art seminar, comprised of eight people including the instructor. About two weeks in advance of the event, Catherine discreetly asked each member of the class individually to jot down their cell phone numbers. Unbeknownst to each, the scraps of paper she offered to them were torn and folded identically.
During our regular class time on the day of the event, we enlisted eight outside helpers to each call one of the of the class members’ phones at the same time, creating a moment in which a commonplace event—a telephone interrupting class—became something more than coincidence.
After the synchronous ringing, we displayed the identical slips of paper as an artifact of the event.