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Prix
de Rome
The
nomination for one of the final prizes of the Prix de Rome in Graphic
Art in 1998, and the possibility of realizing a three-month long
project, triggered a long planned telephone book project, based
on a fascination with listening to other peoples phone talks. The
English language forced Zwierzyñska to choose London as
base for installing a surveillance listening-device in a call box.
Unfortunate fate upset this plan of taping strangers’ phone
conversations and the project transformed itself into a short-term
film library search for thousands of film- and theatre scripts
and scenario’s, which included phone dialogues. These were
later to form a ‘telephone book’ directory of phone
conversations - not numbers.
Using just one side of the conversations, naming them and dividing
into associative or thematic chapters in a way the original Yellow
Pages are divided; then combining the texts with photo-illustrations,
archive images and earlier made works produced a 3000+ page yellow
book. It resembles the British Yellow Pages, photocopied - mostly
in black & white on yellow paper reserved worldwide uniquely
for the Yellow Pages. The
book won Zwierzyñska the 1st prize Prix de Rome and was then
exhibited at Arti et Amicitiae where it was stolen during the show’s
private view. "The
Visitors Guide. The
Best of…Listen®" a 64-page miniature version of "Listen® The
Telephone Book" was intended as a supplement to the “Gouden
Gids’ (Dutch ‘Yellow Pages’) and was to
be a commercial give-away publication of 100.000 copies. |
