Artists Explore Telephone as Medium from Giorno's Dial-A-Poem to Williams's Breezer

Telephones have served as artistic instruments for decades, beginning with John Giorno's 1968 Dial-a-Poem project in New York. This initiative allowed callers to hear randomized recordings of poetry, political speeches, and songs, offering intimate access to cultural figures like Allen Ginsberg. In 2013, Angharad Williams performed Breezer at a South London gallery, calling an audience member's mobile from a nearby park while reading a text about teenage experience. The work's fragile delivery through phone speakers created a private, nostalgic atmosphere that subverted performance art expectations. Alexander Graham Bell's 1876 laboratory in Boston produced the first transmitted words via proto-telephone technology. Historical figures like Steve Jobs engaged with telephone networks as phone phreaks in the 1960s-70s. Philosopher Paul B. Preciado described how phone communication changed during his gender transition. Patrick Langley discussed telephone art history on ArtReview's podcast Subject, Object, Verb.