Christian Boltanski
Sound work for Les Abonnés du Téléphone, 2002
Audio work

Commissioned through the Contemporary Art Society Special Collection Scheme with Lottery funding from Arts Council England, 2002

Christian Boltanski was commissioned to create a new sound work as part of the solo exhibition Les Abonnés du Téléphone in 2002. The gallery was transformed into a dimly-lit library housing 3,000 telephone directories from countries all around the world. Audible from points within the gallery, this sound work lists the names of 12,000 registered voters living within a ten-minute radius of the gallery. Boltanski’s work questions the nature of identity and the ways in which individual experience and collective memory are classified and recorded. The work gives voice to the immediate locality, permeating the silence with a human presence, and revealing the absence of many.