‘Not at the Dinner Table’ turns voicemail into art

Two Los Angeles artists are turning voicemails into a public art project that you can appreciate anywhere you have reception. Jeff Foye and Gordon Winiemko are a pair of artists from Long Beach, better known as JEFF & GORDON. The duo is known forproducing art that examines how human beings interact. Their work was been exhibited at the Sweeney Gallery at U.C. Riverside, and at the Laguna Art Museum. For their latest show, they are inviting people to leave messages to loved ones they have a conflict with… on a public voicemail box.

Anyone can call and leave a message. And anyone can listen to them as well — such as this one, left by a young man getting a few things off his chest.

“Sure, yeah, I was a registered Republican. I bought the whole thing: free market, laissez fair, you know. Get the government off our back, you know. All that great stuff. But you know what’s happened after all these years? We’re not any freer. The market is not free. That’s a total myth. If the market was free, I could grow hemp right now.”

The piece is called “Not at the Dinner Table” — because who wants to spoil family dinners with an argument? And it’s this month’s featured exhibit at 323 Projects. Unlike most art spaces, Three-Two-Three doesn’t have a gallery. It consists of a single phone line and nothing else – an appropriate way to access art at a time when so much communication takes place in the ether.

Jeff and Gordon are taking calls until the end of May at 323-843-4652. You can leave a message. Or just listen to what so many others have to say.

Reporter Carolina Miranda listened in on some of the calls: