For A Good Time Call, 2013
Collaboration with Jacqui Arntfield and W.J. Wilson (EQUΔLΔTERΔL)*
NXNE Music Festival
50+ participating music venues
06.10.2013 - 06.16.2013
For A Good Time Call is a text-based intervention designed specifically to take place in the public washrooms of every participating music venue during the NXNE Music Festival. The text “for a good time, call” was written on every mirror, " accompanied by a temporary phone number and Tumblr URL. Upon calling the number provided, festival-goers were directed to a voicemail asking, “How is your night?” encouraging audience members to vocalize their personal accounts at the performance they attended. The voicemails left on this temporary number were continuously uploaded as audio files to the Tumblr blog throughout the duration of the festival.
Playing archetypal graffiti formats, the project directs its attention to the idiosyncratic details of the individuals who populate the performances and support the musicians. While casual and capricious in appearance - and subsequently easily engaging - the project examines an unnecessary and complacently upheld binary between public and private, performer and audience. By utilizing the most personal space available in a public setting, everything from the introspective to the narcissistic or banal is documented. The Tumblr site hosting the amalgam of public feedback draws a snapshot of all the unnoticed components of what contributes to any cultural festival - the people attending and their attendance's causality. Why are they there? How are they feeling? Are they there to support a particular individual or group? In what way are they interpersonally connected to the festival?
*EQUΔLΔTERΔL was a Toronto-based artist collective comprised of Emily DiCarlo, Jacqui Arntfield and W.J. Wilson, who created interdisciplinary projects with a relational, interactive focus between 2011-2017. Their projects required participation from the viewer, moving them from a passive role to one that is an integral part of the final work. With a preference for exhibiting in non-traditional spaces and doing site-responsive works, EQUΔLΔTERΔL’s projects appeared in streetcars, laneways, vacant storefronts, bars, parks, music venues and private homes.