The Poet that dials is a performance i created for the Lest we Emancipate exhibition, curated by Mike Sperlinger. The work is based on the Dial-a-Poem poets created by John Giorno in 1968, using his non-profit record label Giorno Poetry Systems. There were Fifteen Dial-a-poem phone lines which were connected to answering machines, when people would call they would listen to a fragment of a live poetry recording.
For this performance i connected up a live phone line within the gallery space, and sat in an arm chair calling random phone numbers and immediately reciting poetry to whoever answered until they hung up. After they phone call ended i dialled another number and repeated the process. This continued for 30 minutes.
The performance was documented by Jade Heritage.
Nichol Keene performance from Jade Heritage on Vimeo.
nichol keene 