This week justArts spoke with Jez Huang ‘15, the artist behind You Don’t Have to Pick Up. The art installation in Usdan was part of the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts. 

justArts: Can you give an overview of your project?

Jez Huang: It’s a telephone and it doesn’t ring, but when people pick it up they hear monologues. The monologues are inspired by individuals that I’ve observed or might have met at the probation department when I was interning there. 

JA: How did you come up with this idea?

JH: The idea behind the telephone was because when I was interning [at the probation office], I would pick up the telephone. I just remember the first day I didn’t know what to say because I don’t even know how the probation department works. It was kind of like I would pick up the phone and hand it to someone else, but as time went on, I would pick up the phone, but I wouldn’t know how to answer people. 

If they had questions I couldn’t do anything. I would either transfer them [or] ask a probation officer, but if they didn’t know, they would say, “Just hang up” or “Just transfer them.” I would be like, “Don’t we have anything in the office that can help them?” It was kind of from that helplessness that I wanted to do this phone interaction thing, where they can hear the audience, but they can’t really help in any way or reply in any way, which is what I kind of felt. 

JA: What was the process of creating the piece?

JH: It started with an internship class that I was taking, we all had to do a final project. I was like, “Is there something I can do that’s not a PowerPoint?” because I’m a Theater Arts major, but I didn’t feel like I would be getting anything out of the class if I didn’t do anything that was related to theater. So the professor and I kind of talked, and she was very flexible about me coming up with anything that I wanted. 

So this idea kind of came from that freedom. That was when it first started, when I was working at the probation department and through this class, but I couldn’t actually make the telephone during the first semester, so I did another presentation, and then I was like, “It’s coming soon guys.” I still wanted to do the telephone itself, so my thesis mentor was like “Take a look at the Bernstein festival; this might help; you could get a grant, so I tried getting a grant. 

The monologues were kind of easy; the hard part was putting the phone together, because I didn’t know anything about engineering or anything. I asked my friend who is an engineer, and he was like, “You can use this, this and this,” and I was like, “I don’t know what these things are.” He kind of directed me as to how to put things together, and then I had to find someone else to actually put them together for me. It was kind of like buying the phone, dissecting the phone, putting the processor—the coding and the processor—in there and then putting my monologues in there and just covering it up. 

JA: What do you hope people take away from your piece?

JH: I’m kind of not expecting deep thoughts. There are two different audiences that I can see, or in between as well. But basically, someone just going there and picking up the phone and thinking, ‘Oh, this is really fun, I hear monologues.’ 

Then the deeper message behind the phone is, I guess, what kind of legal system we’re working under, because I don’t want to bash the department I was working for but there were moments where I was like, “Is this really our legal system? Just transfer the person? Just hang up?” That’s my little social justice part, but I also hope people just have fun interacting with it as well, hearing the stories.