Transit Festival
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 by Philip Venables (Belgian Premiere)

In Answer Machine Tape, 1987 Philip Venables works in an original style with messages on an answering machine and a ‘cyborg’ piano that uses sensors to double as a typewriter. His piece gives a painful glimpse into the life of the American artist David Wojnarowicz. The tape in question contains answerphone messages recorded in the days preceding the death of his ex-partner, photographer Peter Hujar, from Hujar himself, other artists, friends and partners. Indirectly they provide us with a heartrending testimony from inside the New York art scene in the midst of the AIDS epidemic.