Misconnected

Theater maker Kyoko Scholiers had a self-built telephone booth travel around for a year. She brought the box to men, women and children who are disconnected from society in one way or another. The telephone wire is the symbol of the social connection that the callers cut, whether voluntarily or not. They are prisoners, refugees, vagrants and homeless people, but also prostitutes, patients and unlucky people. These are children and young people who grow up without mom and dad around. They are (ex-) sect members, hermits, monastics and loners of all kinds. For an entire year, Kyoko spoke to each of them for one hour every season. Kyoko processed the recordings of conversations into five-minute sound fragments, for an installation of four idiosyncratic telephone booths that move slowly along a track. The spectator takes a seat in a booth. Phone numbers are written and scratched on the wall – numbers of people you won’t find in the phone book. Here and there they also left a message: one cryptic, the other direct. The spectator picks up the receiver and dials a number. The telephone booth slowly starts to move and for five minutes the voice of an unknown caller resounds, with words and sighs that he or she confided to Kyoko during the year. What casual passers-by see is an absurdly intriguing landscape of telephone booths moving slowly back and forth. An alienating place that will force both active and passive spectators to look and listen to the world differently.