Desire

When two souls fall in love, there is this moment: they lie next to each other in the dark and do not even want to stop telling things. The voice of the other, who tells his/her life, becomes central, while the lost sleep becomes dispensable. In a cold world that declares everything to be a commodity, people can also buy this moment. Those who lie sleepless in bed can use the service to get a telephonic companion through nocturnal loneliness.

The eponymous protagonist in Tsai, I–Chieh’s video installation talks about this service in a delicate drastic manner. The hell is always the men. It is men who demand their right to be accompanied; it is men who buy themselves all ears. The women remain vocal avatars, tank for needs of the men. Iris tells her own loneliness in the forest of voices, analyses her social position as a woman and the business of loneliness. While we listen to her, she draws steadfastly the picture of the men in their banal obnoxiousness. It is an act of quiet but thorough revenge. The men are jerks, for whose loneliness we could show compassion, who believe they can buy the intimacy of new love.