1-900-DESIRES, Shu Lea Cheang with Lawrence Chua, bell hooks, Laurie Carlos, Renee Tajima, Jessica Hagedorn, Robbie McCauley, Jessica Hagedorn
Originally produced for Exit Arts, NYC, 1992
Courtesy of Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University
In North America 1-900 was used as a premium rate charge to the caller, part of which is returned to the owner of the number. In a pre-internet era the code held a similar use to our contemporary use of the web as message board. The five 1-900-DESIRES recordings that include bell hooks, were originally programmed to play on alphanumeric telephones, accessed through the dial code as part of the installation ‘Those Fluttering Objects of Desire’. For the current exhibition the cassette tapes held within Cheangs archive have been digitized and made available here online and on a tablet viewable as part of the current exhibition Alembic III: protocols for intimacy with Shu Lea Cheang & Annabelle Craven-Jones (11 May – 16 June 2018
Open Wed-Sat 12-6pm or by appointment)
A note found in Cheang’s archive at New York University, hand written in the corner of the typed artist statement reads “swings between media activist, artist, filmmaking”. This reflects the milieu Cheang was part of, collaborating with practitioners across these fields of visual, theatrical and media arts, allied with activism. Participants in 1-900 DESIRES include Laurie Carlos who worked across avant-garde performance and theatre, poet, and multimedia performance artist Jessica Hagedorn, writers bell hooks and Lawrence Chua, Robbie McCauley who was a performer, playwright and theatre director and filmmaker Renee Tajima. Cheang states that at the time bodies and sex were not openly discussed. Whilst another of her installations Colour Schemes (1990) directly addressed racism, Fluttering Objects was her first attempt to foreground sexuality.