Calling America (English version)

Calling America programs are produced as a series of unedited moblogs1 to which people who are engaged in historic struggles and events publish their spoken word reports, recollections and thoughts through the use of cell or landline telephones from remote locations and as events are happening. Contributions form the basis of a collectively authored web-based documentary and communication platform, free of editorial censorship or commentary.

Platform & Tools

Calling America programs attempt to reinterpret the intended function of the common telephone, a communications technology created for use in private speech, and explore ways in which these tools can be used to facilitate and document public and collective speech. The ubiquity of cellular telephones, the general public’s comfort with them, and their role in facilitating intimate private communications (even in the most public of areas) makes them interesting and challenging tools to incorporate into documentary practice where intimate speech concerning public issues is broadcasted to a public audience.

As a publishing platform, Calling America uses a series of linked standard weblogs. Like journals and diaries long before them, blogs are known for content that is personal, confessional, subjective, as well as political, professional and objective, often blending and shifting between these conventions of thought and writing in a single post. Blogs have potential in displaying the arbitrariness of the terms that suppose the personal as separate from the political as well as private from public. Their structure as chronological timelines accommodate a narrative structure shared by both the conventions of traditional oral storytelling, diary and journalistic writing and formal historical texts. These conventions of content and structure make blogs ideal for documentary explorations seeking to amplify and preserve the oral histories of people’s movements as told by individuals immersed in them.

Calling America Programs

March on the Pentagon

As a new project initiated in the spring of 2007, Calling America has completed one blogumentary entitled March on the Pentagon in which a diverse group of activists from across the U.S. recorded their journeys to the historic March on the Pentagon, March 17 2007. Beginning seven days prior to the event each contributor recorded a daily audio blog entry via land-line or cellular telephone in which they reflected on their personal and political motivations, personal stories and acted as citizen journalists recording stories of their travels to Washington D.C. from throughout the country.

Footprints in the Sand - Program Currently Under Development

This is a document of simple human actions taken to save the lives of other human beings. Footprints in the Sand will record the experiences, recollections and motivations of a diverse group of men and women who volunteer to travel into the desert carrying water for desperate travelers. It takes place along a two thousand mile militarized artificial line known as the border.

Survivor's Dispatch - Program Currently Under Development

Two years after Katrina official plans to rebuild New Orleans have largely dismissed the city's low-income public housing residents. These are the voices of individuals engaged in the struggle to rebuild those vital communities.

Calling America - http://www.flawedart.net/callingamerica

Calling America: a project initiated and structured by Mark Cooley. Mark Cooley flawedart@yahoo.com - http://www.flawedart.net is an interdisciplinary artist interested in exploring institutional critique in a variety of contexts. Subjects of particular interest are: U.S. foreign policy, the fine art culture industry and other manifestations of corporate culture. Mark’s work has been featured internationally in online and offline venues such as Exit Art, NY, Rhizome.org, Furtherield.org, the World Social Forum, MediaLab Madrid, Postmasters Gallery, NY, and many other international venues. Mark is currently a professor in the Department of Art and Visual Technology at George Mason University in the suburbs of Washington D.C.