Artists Harwood, Wright and Yokokoji present Tantalum Memorial -- Reconstruction as part of the 01SJ Biennial Exhibition Superlight, at the San Jose Museum of Art. The exhibition runs from May 10 to August 31, 2008.
Tantalum Memorial - Reconstruction is the first in a series of telephony-based memorials by the artists group Harwood, Wright, Yokokoji, to the people who have died as a result of the coltan wars in the Congo. The installation is constructed out of electromagnetic Strowger switches, the basis of the first automatic telephone exchange invented in 1888. The movements and sounds of the switches are triggered by the phone calls of London’s Congolese community as they participate in Telephone Trottoire, a concurrent project also built by the artists in collaboration with the Congolese radio program Nostalgie Ya Mboka.