Imaginary Standard Distance Night, Video Still

Imaginary Standard Distance features video footage of a public telephone structure in Paris and the patrons who use it. The work’s open-ended narratives are influenced by the shifting light of its two contrasting versions: day and night. As people move in and out of the tripartite kiosk, which houses three separate phone booths, the camera captures their private gestures within a public space. The patrons chat leisurely, often leaning on the steel countertops or glass walls of the booths, or communicate with extraneous hand movements to the unseen recipients of their calls. Nighttime patrons are fewer (which sees the kiosk empty at times) and engage the phones in distinctive ways: a young, flirtatious couple occupy a booth together; a woman switches booths; and a man sets his phone down to run momentarily offscreen.