I Just Called is a curated series of voice recordings featuring people leaving all sorts of different unscripted phone messages for their loved ones. Each anonymous caller’s words are unscripted and without context, but the result is immensely affecting for the listener.
It includes voices from Northern Ireland, New Zealand and beyond, and the messages span over 20 different languages. These anonymous recordings touch upon themes of love, shared humanity and the importance of heartfelt communication.
Each message invites the listener to hear individuals sharing emotional and private sentiments with their loved ones. Some share messages to those they have lost, others play a character and act out an imagined scene and some ‘speak’ to those they are no longer in contact with.
One touching message is from a Syrian refugee who spoke in his recording about his desire to return to his home country so we could talk to the recipient of his message in person, again.
The exhibition, featuring a telephone seat and framed poster in each library, allows visitors to scan the QR code on the poster, sit on the telephone seat, and immerse themselves in the messages using their own smartphones.
The exhibition has international origins with recordings first collected in Aotearoa/New Zealand and in Northern Ireland. Following its official Belfast launch in Belfast Central Library this month, it will tour Belfast and surrounding libraries from November 2024 to June 2025.
The sound artist who created this work as part of a Masters degree in Auckland and then a PhD at Ulster University, Colin James Woods, will be present in each library to provide an artist's talk, offering insight into the creation of I Just Called and calling on those who experience it to participate in the project by recording their own anonymous message. Colin said:
“This piece plays with the dynamic between intimacy and voyeurism. We hear people saying heartfelt and private things to the ones they love. By agreeing to be recorded for the work, they have given us permission to listen, but still, there is a sense that we might be intruding – and that’s both delicious and slightly uncomfortable!”
I Just Called underwent a major redesign in response to COVID. In its original format, visitors listened to messages using eight dangling telephone handsets.
“It’s no longer a safe option to have visitors to an exhibition pick up a handset and listen to the messages,” Woods says, “because the handsets are potential vectors for transmission of pathogenic organisms, particularly as they involve hand contact and are then brought into close proximity to the face.
“At the same time, the pandemic has made us very aware of the importance of communication and connectedness, so I feel the work is more relevant than ever.”
Those who have experienced the exhibition have commented on the impact that it has had on them.
Shannon said:
“I only listened to two and already started crying. How lovely!”
While Kate said:
“I love this. What a brilliant and heartwarming way to bring connection.”
An earlier version of the work was shown at the Arts Care exhibition in their gallery space in Connswater Shopping Centre, East Belfast, at The Yellow Yard in Derry and in Libraries in the Antrim and Newtownabbey district.
The exhibition will tour libraries of Belfast from November 2024 to June 2025.
The interactive exhibition will also be included in the University of Liverpool's “Art of Reconciliation” database, which will formally launch at Ulster Museum on 29 October 2024.
Belfast tour dates:
Nov-24 | Chichester Library |
Nov-24 | Cregagh Library |
Dec-24 | Grove Library |
Dec-24 | Ormeau Road Library |
Jan-25 | Shankill Road Library |
Jan-25 | Lisburn Road Library |
Feb-25 | Ardoyne Library |
Feb-25 | Falls Road Library |
Mar-25 | Tullycarnet Library |
Mar-25 | Whiterock Library |
Apr-25 | Ballyhackamore Library |
Apr-25 | Finaghy Library |
May-25 | Holywood Arches Library |
May-25 | Suffolk Library |
Jun-25 | Woodstock Library |
Jun-25 | Colin Glen Library |
About the artist
Colin James Woods was born in Belfast in 1961 and grew up during the troubles. He embraced punk music and non-sectarian politics as a teenager. “Being in a punk band, it didn’t matter that my working-class family couldn’t afford a piano, or piano lessons – I got a guitar, learned a few chords, and started a band with friends.”
He left school at 16 to earn money to buy a guitar amplifier. His first job, in a hospital laboratory, became a 30-year career as a Biomedical Scientist.
Colin emigrated to Aotearoa in 2002 after living in Edinburgh for ten years but returned to Northern Ireland in 2023. In 2009, he fulfilled a lifelong ambition to study music, enrolling in the Diploma of Contemporary Music at Unitec. He then completed a Bachelor of Music at the University of Auckland (majoring in Composition /Sonic Art) and a Master of Creative Technology at AUT. The first iteration of I Just Called was part of his Master of Creative Technology exhibition at the Audio Foundation in 2017. He is currently working towards his practice-based PhD at Ulster University’s Magee campus.