Telephone Trottoire
Telephone Trottoire was built to act as temporary communal bridge between the thousands of refugees currently in London and the rest of the UK. Based on the Congolese practice of Pavement Radio (whereby news and (especially) gossip is transferred vocally by person to person on street corners in an attempt to avoid state censure), Telephone Trottoire initially utilised specially constructed software to pull phone numbers from a database that had been compiled by subscribers to the Nostalgie Ya Mboka radio programme broadcast weekly on Resonance FM. The recipients of the calls would then be greeted with pre-recorded content (including anecdotes, music and jokes to more serious issues like benefit issues in the UK). The content would be in Lingala, the language of the Congolese. If the participant accepted the call then he or she would then have the option of leaving a response, forwarding the call to somebody else or registering for inclusion on the database if not already a member. The piece then reveals its potentially viral nature, creating its own network as it goes along. The Congolese reacted so positively to this media format due to it being broadcast in their own language rather than an attempt by people outside of their own experiences attempting to proffer help with no understanding of the traditions and customs of the people involved. One of the prime motivations and concerns with the Nostalgie team is that the Congolese community need to cement their own links and connections between each other before they can deal with their place in the UK and before they can attempt to refract this power back to their homeland. The mobile phone suddenly grants a mechanism for free speech amongst a people who have suffered so brutally for such a right.
Version 2 of Telephone Trottoire builds on the original by exploring the tragic paradox within the potential for this increased communication between the Congolese diaspora in the UK. One of the predominant reasons the 35,000 plus refugees find themselves in exile is due to the metal tantalum, a vital part of communications technology present in laptops and mobile phones with a value higher than gold. It is the Coltan Wars (a region where tantalum is mined) that has partly precipitated this mass exodus and it is through mobile phone technology that the community has a found a lifeline of connection. it should be stressed form the outset though that this is not the only reason behind the mass exodus and nor doe sit account for inter-communal issues. The buzz around technology provides an angle to highlight some of the problems but it is important not to get overpowered by only the 'fashionable' issues engenderd through new media technology.
The 2008 version of Trottoire makes use of the enormous popularity of the original project by sharpening the stories into a more polemical exploration of life amongst the Congolese, not least by attempting to challenge the lack of community and communal power amongst the exiles. I will post some of the stories onlne once the content is finalised. The new project runs for 12 weeks as opposed to 4 for the original and builds on the enormous database of numbers generated for the first and has the potential to reach an enormous amount of Congolese on a global scale.
In this section and by clicking the links below, there are audio and visual interviews with many of the key protagonists involved in the project. This includes Richard Wright from the artists group Harwood Wright Yokokoji and Analcet Koffi and Vince Luttman from Nostalgie Yam Mboka. There is also detailed documentation describing the history of the project, the motivations behind the work and an explanation of what it does and how it does it. Richard Wright gives an overview of social telephony and its technical make-up as a whole and Felix Dragan explains the complexities and functions of the computer code that was specially written to realise the event including how specific issues within the Cogoloses community contributed towards the construction of this software. This is then followed by 2 further interviews- a video interview with Analcet Koffi and an audio interview with Vince Luttman. Their insights into the Congolese community and their two different takes on the project are both fascinating and of absolute importance in understanding the roots of the project, the challenges to be faced and the possibilities for the future.
Interview with Richard Wright (a video interview explaining the motivations and functions of the Trottoire technology)