The sound of a phone call carries its own tension: the piercing beep of a voicemail system, the high-pitched whine of a rotary dial, or the sudden silence of a lost connection. These noises frame a moment that is both deeply personal and precariously fleeting, a link that can dissolve as swiftly as it forms. In 1968, artist and poet John Giorno transformed that fragility into artistic expression with Dial-A-Poem, a project where callers could dial a number to hear his recorded verses preceded by the mechanical tones of a telephone line. The detached voice at the other end dissolved the boundary between presence and absence—a theme Giorno returned to throughout his career.
The exhibition John Giorno: Seven Dial-A-Poems at John Marchant Gallery in Brighton presents this project alongside a projected image of a telephone, its flickering glow lending an unsettling atmosphere. The work holds particular weight today, given Giorno’s recurring focus on loss and mourning.
Read Also: Iconic London plaster workshop closes after decades
His poetry excels in vivid detail, as seen in The Death of William Burroughs, where he imagines the late Beat writer surrounded by personal belongings—a hat, a gun, a jacket “smelling sweetly of him.” Such precision intensifies the emotional impact of his work, making the transient feel solid. Giorno’s use of the telephone as an artistic medium extended beyond the device itself to what it symbolized: a tool that has united people for over a century while always carrying the threat of disconnection.
The phone’s place in art has shifted since Dalí’s Lobster Telephone (1936), where the surrealist envisioned telephones on leashes or reshaped into fantastical forms. Giorno’s approach differed, his poetry, transmitted through the phone’s static and beeps, occupied the space between conversation and isolation. In Everyone Gets Lighter, he contrasts physical objects, a private jet, a glass of champagne, a “vast dome of blue sky”, with the inevitable fading of human presence, concluding with the quiet refrain: “everyone gets lighter / everyone is light.”
The telephone’s symbolic significance has only grown as technology has progressed.
Read Also: Couple transforms Rome villa into bold Postmodernist retreat
In 1969, the MCA Chicago hosted Art By Telephone, where artists verbally instructed museum staff over the phone to create works that were later destroyed after the exhibition. Giorno’s poetry aligned with this tradition, capturing the ephemeral quality of connection. More recently, Christian Marclay’s Telephones (1995) assembled montages of ringing phones and dropped calls, stretching moments of silence before a single word. What endures in Giorno’s project is its emphasis on listening. In an age overwhelmed by information, his poems, delivered through the hum of a phone line, encourage contemplation. The exhibition at John Marchant Gallery remains on view until 19 September 2026, while the poems can still be accessed at dial-a-poem.org.
