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Martin Ogolter - 12 Conversations and a Party (Samba do Orelhão)
For the project "12 Conversations and a Party" Martin Ogolter made 13 intervention to public phone booths in Rio de Janeiro. The design of those iconic phone booths by the Sino Brazilian architect Chu Ming Silveria (1941-1997) have been a mainstay of the brazilian urban landscape since their introduction in 1971.
The design of these public telephones, was used in several countries around the world, and are known as Orelhão (Big Ear)in Brazil.Today they are already more ephemeral objects then utilitarian urban instalations and telephone companies in Brazil have already removed most of them. For this project, "covers" were sewn for them using the material of another Brazilian icon, the Bikini. These Lycra "covers" were placed on the a few pay phones in public space in Rio de Janeiro and photographed. A single photograph was taken at night and in it, a metallic curtain is covering the front of the “Orelhão” (Big Ear).
The “covers” turned the telephones into colorful canvases in the public space that remind us of “colorfield painting”, the colored plane in the middle of the paintings further reinforcing the urban chaos around. The flat front shapes also remind us vaguely of the heads of Cycladic sculptures.
Depending on the age of the spectator these devices have nostalgic meaning, or for the younger generations just a curiosity they never used and will never use because soon the last “Orelhões” will also be removed and only seen in design museums articles about design history.
The photo taken at night, with its celebratory atmosphere, the formal and descriptive curiosity of the project also wants to celebrate the millions of conversations that have taken place in these islands of tranquility in the urban cacophony.