{"product_id":"karen-finley-1-900-all-karen-creative-time-1998","title":"KAREN FINLEY — 1-900-ALL-KAREN, Creative Time, 1998","description":"\u003cp\u003eOffset-printed artist postcard, 10.5 × 15 cm; colour image to recto, project information and postal format to verso. Issued by Creative Time and distributed through Max Racks Freecards to advertise \u003cem\u003e1-900-ALL-KAREN\u003c\/em\u003e, launched on Presidents' Day, 16 February 1998.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe project turned Karen Finley herself into a telephone service. Dial the number and, every day for six months, a new recorded performance appeared: news, social injustice, motherhood, daily life, whatever Finley needed to say that day. The first minute cost $1.75; every additional minute, $1.25. Creative Time described it as a national public-art project built around the peculiar intimacy of the 900 number — a technology then associated with phone sex, psychics and paid companionship.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe timing is the charge. Eight years earlier, Finley had become one of the NEA Four, after grants recommended for her, Holly Hughes, John Fleck and Tim Miller were denied amid the American culture wars over obscenity and public arts funding. By the time this card entered circulation in February 1998, that fight had reached the United States Supreme Court. \u003cem\u003eNEA v. Finley\u003c\/em\u003e was argued on 31 March 1998 and decided on 25 June — while \u003cem\u003e1-900-ALL-KAREN\u003c\/em\u003e was still running. Creative Time was explicit about the connection: the phone line would also give Finley a place to speak about the case as it unfolded.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe sequence becomes unusually tight. In 1990, an institution decides whether Finley's speech deserves funding. In 1998, Finley turns speech itself into the artwork — and distributes it nationally by telephone. No gallery required. No application panel between artist and listener. Just a number, a voice and the meter running.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe recto makes the proposition visible. A receiver hangs against a black field while language curls around it like a telephone cord, smoke or a voice refusing to stay in a straight line: \u003cem\u003eWe are your holding hand… your warm pillow… your cuddly toy.\u003c\/em\u003e The image is part hotline advertisement, part late-night seduction, part promise of emotional support — knowingly borrowing the commercial language surrounding the very technology Finley was appropriating. The verso makes the distribution system visible: Creative Time beside the project details; below it a dense strip of partner institutions stretching across the United States, including MOCA Los Angeles, Yerba Buena, the Aldrich and DiverseWorks. Creative Time organised the project with twelve arts organisations, making the telephone line a kind of invisible national exhibition space.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen comes Max Racks. The project was advertised through its free postcard racks in restaurants and bars, as well as on matchbooks. That makes this format unusually right for the work: designed to be picked up casually, carried away, mailed, left on a table or slipped into a pocket — a free object whose job was to move you toward a paid, immaterial encounter with the artist's voice. In 1998, before the feed, the story, the podcast or the daily notification became ordinary cultural forms, Finley had already built a daily artist transmission. And she placed its access code on a free card.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot simply promotional material for a performance, but part of the performance's delivery system. The card carried the number. The number carried the voice. The voice carried the work.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCondition: very good vintage; light handling consistent with its original free-distribution format. Securely packed; tracked UK and international shipping available.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Creative Time","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54257724883282,"sku":"FINLEY-CREATIVETIME-PC-1998","price":45.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/5636\/1554\/files\/Finley_Karen.Artistpostcard_1-900-ALLKAREN.jpg?v=1786685276","url":"https:\/\/thenewrare.com\/products\/karen-finley-1-900-all-karen-creative-time-1998","provider":"The New Rare","version":"1.0","type":"link"}