A bust of a person we later see reading a newspaper. Interrupted by a telephone call. A poster of another person crying while cutting an onion. Potato peels landing on your cheek. Vegetables being excavated from the kitchen garden. Onion skin. A group playing a whispering game. The telephone is broken.

The installation Broken Telephone explores how reconstructions of prehistoric people are influenced by our ideas of heroism. Through reconstruction upon reconstruction, new characters are made. They interact in a surreal tableau of things and people, and hybrids between things and people.

The installation introduces The Whisper Game (also called Broken Telephone) as a metaphor for how cumulative information is transformed due to biases and inaccuracies in communication. Biases such as assumptions about what is heroic.

Photos by Jan Windszus.

Special thanks to:
Kristina Stengaard (animation of telephone scenes)
Mark Tholander (animation of Whisper Game scenes)
Xenia Xamanek Lopez (sound production)