I have social anxiety.

 

One day, I was sitting in a building lobby of a university, listening to a poem written by Walt Whitman, Song of Myself. Just when I was trying to capture these words in my earphone, out of sudden, a public phone began to ring. 

 

How should I put it--my strong affection at that moment? I still have the poem floating in my mind, and this urgent, anxious ringing crashed into the space around me. I looked up and found this small, tarnished telephone mounted on the wall.  

My breath was boiling, and I felt a desire, an impulsion inside me that I want to pick the phone up, whoever this mysterious figure is in the other side, I want to throw the poem across, Song of Myself.

 

Then, it stopped--quiet and void--only the poem is playing, still. 

 

The telephone is about a specific site that all the events, emotions and contradictoriness occurs in this place.

 

In the carefully crafted object--the animate like telephone, I installed a Sound System, whenever it detects a body, it would ring.  However, if you pick it up and try to answer, there is only a depressive silence you will be buried in.

 

The telephone is a symbol, a hint, suggest a gesture of interflow. With the sound, it represents the urgency of reaching out, but it is also a frightened little thing-- I always knew it must share my anxiety.

 

So I pat it, comfort it.

 

I keep it company,

 

Moreover, I also share its solitude and isolation.