Sent From My Verizon, Samsung Galaxy Smartphone, acrylic paint on plastic,Size: M. 2016. Installed and left at Pay Fauxn Gallery: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cabs+Nursing+Home+Co+Inc/@40.6910965,-73.9520844,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x1d4f5b5ddf009604!8m2!3d40.6910965!4d-73.9520844 .
http://www.payfauxn.com/keith-allyn-spencer
Pay Fauxn was an obsolete pay phone at defunct nursing home at a bus stop in New York City. No free air.
– Marin Kosut (operations)
– Andre Yvon (operations assistant)
Norms of Pay Fauxn (rapidly devolving as appropriate)
– ANTI-OPENINGS: Openings must be no longer than 10-13 minutes (allow for 17 under unusual circumstances but keep it moving).
– SOCIALITY: Director must warmly greet every visitor and introduce them to each other and the artist.
– PR: Don’t invite more than a handful. Announce day of or before, but never give address. Anti PR. Conforms moderately to convention.(UPADATE January 2018 – NO PR)
– PROP FOR THE HAND: There is a beverage. When people stand around awkwardly on a side walk, just as in a white cube, it helps to have something in your hand. Notice that smokers light up right away – awkward – bring drinks for everyone. Hand people a can for the hand.(UPDATE January 2018 – no beverage. Give necklace sculpture to artist. Put it around their neck.)
– POEM/GIFT: Do something. Visitors get an envelope. Told to open when they get home and they are alone. A directive – think about how pay phones invite a kind of sociality and public (mis)communication. Dead media. Users re-purpose the phone. Have sex in it, sleep in it, pee in it, throw garbage in it. Reflect on pay phones and changing relationships – to technology and multispecies inter/intra-actions. PF Gallery is an abandoned pay phone in a blasted gentrified urban landscape. (UPDATE January 2018 – the artist is the poem.) The artist is the poem.
