FEEL FOUND
Documentation:
More than 200 flyers have been posted throughout Los Angeles alone.
The coordinates of every flyer have been recorded for the next stage of the work.
Fourteen anonymous messages have been collected.
FEEL FOUND
Leave your house after dark.
Go alone.
Do not choose where you are going.
At every intersection,
take the direction that feels least reasonable.
Continue.
When the world feels familiar,
keep walking.
When it no longer feels arranged for you,
stop.
Sit.
Wait.
Call the voicemail.
(213) 518-7690
When it answers,
do not introduce yourself.
Speak only of what is present.
What you hear.
What you smell.
What the air is doing.
What moves.
What almost escaped your attention.
What you cannot name.
If you have nothing to say,
remain silent until you do.
Do not explain yourself.
Do not tell a story.
Do not say who you are.
Leave one message.
Hang up.
Do not listen to it.
Go home.
One day,
someone you will never meet
may hear your voice.
To hear another,
return to this pole.
One day,
directions to the telephones will appear.
By leaving a message, you consent to its inclusion in this artwork. Recordings may later be encountered anonymously through other telephones. Messages containing identifying information may be edited, anonymized, or omitted.
pleasestayontheline.com
THE OTHER SIDE
A white room.
Four white desks.
Evenly spaced.
A black chair at each desk.
A single black telephone rests at the center of every desk.
Nothing else.
Visitors enter.
They choose a telephone.
They sit.
They lift the receiver.
A voice begins.
One anonymous voicemail.
When it ends,
the line falls silent.
The receiver is returned to its cradle.
The room waits.
Another visitor arrives.
Another telephone.
Another voice.
Some voices are clear.
Some wander.
Some struggle to find words.
Some contain only breathing,
wind,
or distant traffic.
Some fall silent before they are finished.
No names.
No locations.
No explanations.
Only moments of presence,
left behind for someone else to encounter.
The archive continues to grow.
Each recording is heard alone.
No one knows whose voice will answer.
No one knows who listened before them.
The room fills with strangers
who never meet.
LOGISTICS
Voicemail Greeting
You have arrived.
Speak only about what is present.
Leave your message after the tone.
Current State
Feel Found is already active. Flyers have been posted in five U.S. states. More than 200 have been installed throughout Los Angeles alone. As of this writing, 14 anonymous messages have been collected.
The work has already begun spreading through participants themselves. Friends who agreed to install flyers in their own cities have independently chosen to share the project through their social media accounts, inviting others to participate.
Vintage landline telephones are currently being sourced while a PBX system is being built to power them. Each telephone will remain fully functional, automatically placing a call to a dedicated extension when the receiver is lifted. Rather than connecting to another person, each extension will play a single anonymous voicemail drawn from the growing collection before the line disconnects and resets for the next visitor.
Future Development
At present, the telephone number routes to a burner phone voicemail box. The long-term plan is to move the project to a Twilio-based system, allowing local telephone numbers to be established in multiple countries while feeding into a shared archive. Eventually, anyone will be able to access a version of the flyer with a telephone number local to their country, install it in their own city, and contribute new voices.
Friends and collaborators who install flyers on behalf of the project document the coordinates of every installation and return several months later. At that time, each flyer is removed and replaced with the next stage of the work.
In cities where a physical listening room is not possible, the replacement instructions instead direct participants to call a separate voicemail box, where they encounter one anonymous recording before the line disconnects.
The first listening room will open to the public in an apartment in Los Angeles once enough voicemails have been collected. Designed to be portable, the listening room can be reassembled in different cities as the project continues to spread.