The wind phones, sanctuaries to reconnect with the deceased.
The wind phones, these telephone booths disconnected from any network, remind us of the meaning of conversation in an era where everything becomes purchasable.
Second newsletter around sanctuaries. And welcome to the new subscribers!
Social networks are on the verge of becoming increasingly transactional spaces. In an era where everything and everyone is for sale, suddenly finding spaces outside of any mercantile consideration seems like a form of prowess.
While browsing Atlas Obscura, a platform that lists around 30,000 wonderful places on the planet, I discovered the "wind phones" in Japan. These telephone booths (not connected to any line) aim to communicate with the deceased.
An ode to imagination
The first "wind phone" was created in Otsuchi by Itaru Sasaki, a landscapist who lost his cousin after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. This booth helps with the grieving process. No sign indicates where the booth is located. It's a form of exploration, a quest to find it.
Interviewed in 2021 by Laura Imai Messina, Mr. Sasaki provides even deeper explanations:
"Life goes by so fast and most of us find it unthinkable that our bonds with those around us might expire before we do. And so we need to cultivate imagination, starting from childhood. The Wind Phone doesn’t work without a good imagination. Rather than valuing only what we can see, hear and touch, we need to also recognize the value in things that don’t have a shape, a form, an audible voice."
Itaru Sasaki
Mr. Sasaki gives an interesting reading of what really matters: taking the time to imagine anew, exploring the sensitive domain, listening through the lines.
This wind phone acts as an apostrophe to the lost being; the booth creates an actual unity of place, but also of suspended time. And of action: the person in the booth decides through a long process to try to hear the other. They become the telephone themselves; it's no wonder that many visitors actually perceive something during this experience.
This almost magical sensation for those who are willing to believe undoubtedly recalls the notion of digital liveness in social networks, the quality or state of being alive, one that relies on imagination and the ability to engage with an interlocutor in another dimension. It's interesting that in the case of wind phones, it is indeed through the most absurd disconnection - a phone stripped of its line, in the midst of a wild space - that humans can reconnect with each other.
An artifact that multiplies throughout the world
Wind phones are being created all over the world since this Japanese precedent. From some American states to new burial customs in Poland, they are a marker of our time.
Undoubtedly the need to sanctify important moments, to stop time and the world of notifications to be fully in the moment.
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Amazing links
In France, the Seine-Port Town Hall has developed a municipal charter concerning public spaces aimed at protecting against screen overexposure.
In the United Kingdom, the government may succeed in banning mobile phones in schools.
Dream Machine: read this interview with aurèce vettier on Le Random.
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