Rappel
Algojo, Pierre-André Arcand, Doyon/Demers, Chantal Dumas, Kathy Kennedy, Daniel Leduc, Christof Migone, Jean Routhier, Sylvia Wang, Gregory Whitehead
For Rappel, Avatar invited artists to orchestrate a détournement of the telephone—that epitome of ordinariness—using it to broadcast, record, or host exchanges.
To guide the artists, Avatar asked the following questions: How might the telephone’s characteristically banal sound exchanges be transformed? What could be done to its identifying sounds and the codes of communication they impose? Rappel subverts the telephonic instrument and reflects on its fundamental nature.
Rappel was a two-year project. Artists worked with a dedicated phone line between September 15, 1994, and May 26, 1995. On January 7, 1995, they took over Mario Gauthier’s Les chants magnétiques on Radio-Canada’s Chaîne culturelle. Their experiments were recorded and compiled by Avatar’s Christof Migone. Rappel was at last released in 1996.
