PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE
A caller leaves a voice.
A listener leaves an image.
An encounter leaves a word.
The listener invents a stranger.
Flyers have been posted across six U.S. states.
More than 200 have been installed throughout Los Angeles alone.
The coordinates of every flyer are recorded.
As of this writing, seventeen messages have entered the system.
WALKING INSTRUCTIONS
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.
Do not check where you are.
When the world feels familiar:
keep walking.
When it no longer feels arranged for you:
stop.
Sit.
Stay for nine minutes.
Do nothing.
Do not photograph anything.
Do not make the time useful.
Listen.
Notice what you almost failed to notice.
Notice what you cannot name.
Once nine minutes have passed:
call
(213) 518-7690
When the line answers:
do not introduce yourself.
Do not give your exact location.
Do not explain why you are calling.
Speak from where you are.
Speak about whatever is present.
If you have nothing to say:
remain silent.
You do not need to finish a thought.
When you are finished:
hang up.
Do not listen back.
Go home.
You will not be told who receives your voice.
You will not be told where they are.
You will not be told when it happens.
One day,
somewhere else,
someone you will never meet
may lift a telephone
and your voice will answer.
AFTER YOU CALL
Your recording enters a waiting system.
Your name is not attached to it.
Your telephone number is not given to the listener.
Your exact location is not disclosed.
Then:
the recording waits.
Days may pass.
Months may pass.
The person who left it continues living a life the work does not know.
Eventually, somewhere else, another person makes an appointment.
They enter a room.
They lift a telephone.
The system chooses a waiting voice.
Then your voice begins.
TO HEAR ANOTHER
Make an appointment.
Choose an available time.
Arrive on time.
Come alone unless accessibility or safety requires otherwise.
The address is provided after the appointment is confirmed.
You will not choose the recording.
You will not know what is waiting for you.
THE APPOINTMENT
I am bad at scheduling.
You may accidentally be booked at the same time as someone else.
This may produce an interesting encounter.
It may not.
I do not have a plan for what to do if this happens.
We will figure it out.
Or the two of you will.
I will leave most likely.
THE OTHER SIDE
Arrive at the appointed time.
Approach the door.
Open it.
It will be unlocked.
Enter.
You will find yourself in a mostly empty living room.
At its center:
a desk.
A chair.
A telephone.
A camera is visible.
An anonymous customer service representative is waiting.
They will confirm your appointment and explain the conditions of participation.
Read the consent form.
If you agree:
sign it.
You may leave at any time.
You are not required to complete the encounter.
Once the form is signed:
the representative leaves.
The door closes.
No one is home.
You are alone.
You are still being watched.
THE ROOM
Sit at the desk.
At its center is a telephone.
Beside it:
a pen
and a small piece of paper.
Pick up the receiver.
The telephone connects automatically.
Before the recording begins, the system gives you two measurements:
the distance between this telephone and the location where the recording entered the system,
and
the amount of time that has passed since it was recorded.
For example:
2,106 miles.
118 days.
Then:
silence.
A voice begins.
Listen.
THE VOICE
The person speaking cannot see you.
They do not know you are here.
They do not know when you arrived.
They do not know what your face does when they hesitate.
Whether you lean closer.
Whether you look away.
Whether nothing appears to happen at all.
They may have forgotten making the recording.
But their voice has arrived.
You may hear speech.
Wind.
Traffic.
Footsteps.
Breathing.
Someone losing a thought.
You do not know where they are.
You do not know who they are.
They cannot hear you.
There is no reply.
For the duration of the recording,
you receive someone
without being received in return.
Listen until the voice stops.
THE CAMERA
While the caller exists in the room only as sound,
you exist in the work as an image.
The caller cannot see you.
You cannot answer them.
The camera can see you.
Later, someone else may see your image
and make a person from you.
WHEN THE VOICE ENDS
The line falls silent.
Do not immediately move.
Wait.
Then return the receiver to its cradle.
The recording you heard has completed its public transmission.
It will not be assigned to another public listener.
You were its listener.
The system marks the voice:
HEARD
A preservation copy may remain within the private archive of the artwork.
That particular encounter will not happen again.
ONE WORD
Look at the paper on the desk.
Write one word for what remained after the line went silent.
If no word feels adequate:
leave the space blank.
Then:
consider the person you have never seen.
Without trying to be correct,
write the approximate age you imagined.
Write the place you imagined them speaking from.
Write the emotional state you attributed to them.
Stand.
Leave the room.
Close the door behind you.
The chair becomes empty again.
The telephone resets.
Another voice waits.
CURRENT SYSTEM
At present, the public telephone number routes to a dedicated voicemail box.
Recordings are being collected as the physical flyer network expands.
The first full listening room will open in Los Angeles once enough voices have entered the system.
The room is designed to be portable.
It can disappear from one city
and reappear in another.
Please Stay On The Line developed from an earlier exchange I began as a teenager, documented in Nevada/Resumed: something found, carried for a while, then left for someone unknown. Here, the object became a voice.
CONSENT / PRIVACY
By leaving a message, you consent to the recording becoming part of Please Stay On The Line.
Do not state your full name, address, exact location, telephone number, or other identifying information you do not want included in the work.
A person's voice can itself be recognizable.
The project therefore cannot guarantee complete anonymity.
The recordings are more precisely described as:
unnamed voices.
Listeners are not intentionally provided with identifying information about the speaker.
Participation in the listening room requires separate consent.
The camera is visible.
The consent form states how the recording, the listener's associated word, and their recorded impressions may be stored, archived, reproduced, or exhibited.
The listener's impressions are not treated as factual information about the speaker.
A participant may leave before beginning or stop participating during the encounter.
Consent to participate in one part of the project does not imply unlimited consent to every possible future use.
The work depends on asymmetry.
It does not depend on deception.
PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE.
YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US.
ALL REPRESENTATIVES ARE CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE.
I MADE THIS WAITING ROOM WHILE WAITING FOR THE NEXT CALLER.
NOT GREAT CONDITIONS FOR MAKING A THING.
PRODUCED UNSELLABLE PRODUCT.
IMPORTANT TO KEEP HANDS MOVING WHILE MOUTH WORKS.
FIDGETING: MITIGATED.
I WAS BORED.
AND TIRED OF THE VOICES.
I LOVE THEM.
BUT THEY BORE ME.
I CANNOT SIT ON THE LINE FOREVER.
JUST ONE MORE HOUR.
THE DRILL WAS TOO LOUD FOR THE LAST CALLER.
AND THE NEIGHBORS.
NEED SOMETHING QUIETER.
I THOUGHT OF PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE WHILE ON THE LINE WITH STUART FROM DES MOINES, IOWA.
WE TALKED FOR NINE MINUTES AND 8 SECONDS.
I ACCIDENTALLY SCHEDULED HIS CALL AT THE SAME TIME AS JOHN FROM CINCINNATI.
SORRY STUART AND JOHN.
THANKS FOR THE IDEA.
I TORE THE THING DOWN AT 5:00 PM.
NOW THERE IS NO ONE ON THE OTHER END.
YOUR CALL IS WAITING.
I SEE IT IN THE CORNER OF THE SCREEN.
I WILL NOT ANSWER.
I AM UNAVAILABLE.
THE ROOM IS NOT NECESSARY.
THIS COULD ALL HAPPEN THROUGH A VOICEMAIL BOX.
BORED OF THAT.
AND YET WHY ESCAPE IT.
THE PROPOSAL CAN WAIT.
IT ALREADY IS.
SOMEONE WAS HERE BEFORE YOU.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.
GOODBYE.
I talk to people on the telephone all day.
I invent stories about them.
I change myself to meet them where I believe they are.
A voice gives me very little, but I make a person from it.
I cannot know who you are.
I do it anyway.
— A Customer Service Representative