GABRIEL OROZCO: Sometimes when I was coming to New York for visit, I stay with friends in apartments and I remember once, it was an empty apartment, which somebody lent me for a week. The only thing there was a telephone and a phone book.
I was kind of mesmerized by this long list of names, and the idea about everything is contained in that book. So I thought it was probably interesting to see, what will happen if I cut out all the names and just leave the columns with the phone numbers. And then, I start to cut these things and paste them in a roll of Japanese paper. One by one of these columns. So there is something very mechanical about it, very technical, and cold. But on the other hand, this is a very crafty work.
The complete phone book is around 25 meters long. You can see this is a document that is about everything and nothing. So you don’t have the names. It’s just numbers. With in a way no meaning. And then in a way, this work is measuring a city, because this is the complete city in there.