I Want to Be Alone - video installation - 2024

Playing on a wall-mounted screen is a composition made from 28 film scenes of one-sided telephone calls – like the old Bob Newhart bit, a telephone call in which only the on-screen character can be heard. The clips are juxtaposed and intercut, creating a narrative between the the lone interlocutors. They complain of sightlessness, of longing for the empty space on the other end of the phone; they reach out to the nothingness off-camera. 

The video’s sound can be heard only by picking up the receiver of a landline telephone, separated from the video screen by a frosted glass divider. 

single-channel full HD video, landline telephone, aluminum, rigid PVC

12:30 min loop

photos: Juan David Cortes