Work

Call Cutta

Maker Rimini Protokoll  ·  Work date 2005-??-??  ·  Medium telephone  ·  Role work

Description

Maker's blurb: "Who are you when the phone rings? Does intimacy start when service ends? Imagine going for a walk with somebody who is not there! A 60-minutes Mobile Phone Theater by Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel" — "THE PLAY STARTS THE MOMENT YOUR CELL PHONE IS RINGING. YOU WALK THROUGH THE CITY, THE SHOW IS AT THE PHONE." A tour through Calcutta and Berlin remote-controlled from an Indian call center. As soon as the mobile phone in your hand rings the intercontinental play begins: a voice with an Indian accent answers — still a stranger, soon your ally. "Do you see the red house in front of you? Walk toward it, bend down as if tying your shoes, then you can look into the cellar window unnoticed." Performers are call-center workers in Kolkata, live, one to one.

Source. https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/project/call-cutta

On the medium. Mobile call; the participant walks the city while a Kolkata call-center agent guides them.

Anatomy

Thirteen criteria after Lauren R. Beck. Each carries a source grade: M maker-confirmed, P published, F first-hand, I inferred by the compiler, ? not yet established. Definitions are on the anatomy page.

• Participants listen through headphonesnoP

  Maker text puts the phone in the participant's hand; no headphones specified anywhere.

• Participants move through space as part of the workyesP

  "YOU WALK THROUGH THE CITY." Relocation is the work — the seated test fails outright.

• Audio technology is necessaryyesP

  The call is the show. Remove the line and nothing remains.

• Site-, situation- or language-specificSiteP

  Named routes through Kreuzberg West and Kolkata; the red house, the cellar window. Cannot be staged elsewhere unchanged.

• Engages with the history of a siteyesP

  SOURCED. Rimini Protokoll's own essay: the artists "have woven in the history of colonial India's struggle for independence from the British into the Kreuzberg district" — Subhas Chandra Bose's Berlin office and his 'Free India' radio station, 1941-43, and the Indian Legion, tied to specific buildings on the route. Your Figure 6 judgment was right and now has a citation.

• Created for an urban environmentyesP

  Explicitly a walk through the city; the urban fabric is the set.

• Created as an artwork other than theaternoP

  Rimini Protokoll's own genre label is "Mobile Phone Theater."

• Intended to be understood as theateryesP

  Same label. Theatrical vocabulary throughout the maker's page.

• Accidental real-world sights and sounds are importantyesP

  "Do you see the red house in front of you?" The work directs attention outward continuously; the street is the content.

• Spectator must participateyesP

  Two-way conversation plus physical instruction-following. Silence and stillness would end it.

• Has live performers other than the participantsyesP

  A live call-center agent in Kolkata, named in the credits, speaking in real time.

• Involves game playnoI

  No rules, objective or resolution state in the maker's text. 'Playful' is not game play.

• Uses props other than the listening devicenoI

  The maker's page names only the phone and the city. Absence here is weak evidence — consider ?.

← back to the archive