Minerva Cuevas: “Free calls”.

Most contemporary attempts to turn public telephones into art installations don’t do much for me. Flowerpots and libraries seem to have piqued the web world’s appetite for irony, but a needless whiff of cynicism inhabits such works.

This, however, is the type of payphone art I can get behind. This public telephone art installation leverages the device for what it is: a telephone.

The LATimes.com Blog reports on Minerva Cuevas’ payphone art installation in Mexico City. The bright-red phone invited passers-by to make a free phone call to any phone number in the world.

The LATimes writes:

“The free pay phone is a powerful piece, the equivalent of an art-world
bomb aimed at the web of private financial structures that profit from
our 21st century need for telecommunicating with loved ones. It is
especially potent in the financial nerve center of Mexico City, where
telecom magnate Carlos Slim bases the Telmex and Telcel empires that
make him the world’s richest man.” (Photo by Daniel Hernandez @ LAtimes.com)

Art could soon meet reality in the United States. Phone calls have become cheap enough for telephone companies that some have considered turning their payphones into free phones. Free public phones failed some years ago, but if it failed once then it was an experiment whose time might have come. The business of coin-fed and credit-card-paid calls has evaporated to virtually nothing, leaving cities and governments looking for new ways to subsidize this valuable public service.