TELEPHONE International Artists Game | Exhibition Release

 

TELEPHONE, the third international art game of its kind, just dropped its finishing exhibition after 2 years, and I'm ecstatic to share my participation in this unique creative endeavor! 

Firstly, what is TELEPHONE?

"TELEPHONE is a game played by artists. It works like the children’s game of the same name. A message is whispered from person to person and changes and evolves as it is passed from player to player. In our case, we pass a secret message from art form to art form, so a message could become poetry and then painting and then music and then film, throughout all possible forms of art. We also assign each finished work of art to two or three other artists, so the game branches outward exponentially like a family tree.

[This is the third game of TELEPHONE. The first game, developed in partnership with Satellite Collective, was published in 2015 and consisted of 315 artists. That first game was featured in The New York Times. The second game of TELEPHONE was played during the pandemic and published in 2021. It consisted of work by 795 artists.]

This game exhibition consists of 1,395 individual, interconnected and original works by artists from 930 cities in 65 countries. Presented to you here are 1,395 individual works of art. Yet it may well be that, because they are directly based on one another, these 1,395 artists have together created a single work of art. We leave it to your own judgement, but it is possible that TELEPHONE is one work of art, created by artists from 65 countries."

What role did I play?

I was one of many poets/ writers whose portfolio was chosen to participate in their Literature category! For that honor, I am very grateful to the entire team behind this amazing "game".

^ The Proof

Below, my poem, inspired by the art that was sent to me to be "deciphered" and passed on, including a brief profess statement by me on the work.

Ocean Child 

Lay your palm upon the ocean and 

Feel

The heartbeat of a spinning sphere

hands that ripple, holding yours

as the sun

Runs

Across the sky and weeps

For kinder days gone by - golden

The teardrops in the sea

And LIFE

the creature's chorus cries to me.

They swim in sunlit coral reefs

And blow their pearl bubbles

Up to me, gasping

LIFE

for me too, please.

My children are not food, PLEASE.

On my dinner plate, I hear

The ocean faraway

Sing in sorrow for its child

Gone

Gone like the days behind

And still,

The galaxies they spin 

And still,

The bells of life they ring.

Process statement.

I wanted to capture my unfiltered thoughts and first reaction on seeing the artwork, so I only viewed it when I was ready to write about it. Immediately, the poem spilled out onto the page.

As a child, I often wrestled with the ethics around eating animals or their byproducts. This poem explores the emotions and worries that burdened me at that time, and occasionally still.

Check out the full TELEPHONE exhibition online here!