Who's on the line? Call for free!

In every large city, there are call shops where people can make telephone calls cheaply. From the sound of their voices and excited gesturing, one can only guess at the dramatic events the customers in the booths are describing to friends and relatives a continent away while the telephone units are ticking. For his project Who's on the line? Call for free!, the artist Josep-Maria Martín choose residential areas in several German cities which are inhabited by a large number of immigrants. In each of these quarters, he parked a caravan in which passers-by could make a ten-minute call to anyone in the world for free. The only hitch was that, after the call, they had to have a short conversation with a writer and answer some questions. Some of the participating writers had immigrant backgrounds themselves. The caravan offered the writers a place and opportunity to enter in a dialogue with the residents about their personal experiences and social tensions in their respective city districts. The conversations were the basis for short stories, essays and poems which later were compiled and published in book form.

Project manager / curator: Stefanie Klinge
Artist: Josep-Maria Martín (E)
Writers: Feridun Zaimoglu (TR/D), Anna Katharina Hahn, Thomas von Steinaecker, Fahimeh Farsaie (IR), Stefan Beuse, Pilar Baumeister (E/D), Sudabeh Mohafez (IR/D), Odile Néri-Kaiser (F/D) and others

Venues and schedule:
Cologne: 7 - 10 June 2007; Hamburg: 13 - 16 June 2007; Berlin 23 - 26 June 2007; Stuttgart: 27 June - 1 July 2007; in planning: Frankfurt: 10 - 14 October 2007 (presentation during the Frankfurt Book Fair)