CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN: When did text messages become part of your art?
ADAM McEWEN: I had a standard Nokia phone, which is the most common phone in Europe, and I got somebody to design a font that exactly matched my phone's-pixel by pixel. Because this context is so familiar and everyone sees it every day in its most banal function, you could surprise yourself with meaning. It's the same thing as walking down the street and seeing a sign on a store that says sorry, we're closed. The familiarity of that opens up the possibility of throwing in the unfamiliar.
CB: Are the text messages real ones sent by friends?
AM: They're all real texts, texted to me or texted to friends of mine who've forwarded them to me.
CB: Text messages are conversation killers-they're an ideal way to avoid talking. But you've framed them, turning them into bits of poetry and biography.
AM: They're saying nothing. They're saying, "K, C U later," with a smiley face after it. But in a weird way they're strangely revealing. It's like this weird language that's evolved. People text anything from suicide notes to pleas of love to bitching at their little sister.
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/adam-mcewen/
