Sam Burcher meets James Jessiman, sculptor, teacher, writer, publisher, and patron of 020 Desk Zero, a poetry telephone line happening now and in the future.
James is a man with a backpack (more about that later) and he’s on a mission to make the spoken word more accessible. His medium is 020 Desk Zero, an audible gallery that you can freephone to listen to poetry, prose and musical artworks. In the Audrey cafe at the National Gallery in London, he hands me a card for the 24 hour hotline, which is activated the moment a caller brimming with curiosity dials 020-3375-9376.
020 Desk Zero has been active in the UK for around eighteen months and receives thousands of calls. It riffs on the idea of Dial-a-Poem, which started in New York in 1968. And, perhaps harks back to playing one top ten single a day on Dial-a-Disc (1966-1991) provided by the Post Office when you dialled 160, definitely more fun than TIM, the speaking clock. Now phone technology has moved far beyond that, there are more options to choose from. The numbers on James’s card from one to zero and symbols connect you to the sound of something entirely different.
The artists and writers James curated for 020 Desk Zero, Gates of Desire, are all creators he deeply admires. It was the perfect way to interact with them and learn more about their work. The gallery facilitates an intimate space in which to hear works lasting between 30 seconds and 30 minutes long. Each contributor received a limited edition cassette of the collection, available only to them. Although there are connotations between phone numbers on cards and illicit sex, not the case here, powerful themes of desire, fragility and longing are present nonetheless.
So, let’s imagine for a moment a rotary dial with ten indentations. Our fingers caress the circular face in anticipation of dialling our chosen numbers. Then, we insert a finger into a hole to about the depth of the first phalange, making a clockwise rotation until the metal stop. We’ll either impatiently rotate the hole counterclockwise, eager to dial again or lugubriously allow the mechanism to glide our finger back. Maybe we’ll extract it altogether to fully savour the delicious clicking sound as the dial springs back to the resting position, and then repeat the process.
But instead we’ll nonchalantly tap, then prod and press the plasticky screen protector. And, after that, the curious believer is seamlessly directed to 020 Desk Zero’s options as follows:
Dial 1 for Ruth Novaczek, I’m Here, Are you There. Ruth is a film maker, whose work centres around heartbreak and longing. What started as an arrangement to play tennis, ended up with James receiving a manuscript of her novella Wrongness, which he plans to publish next year.
Dial 2 for Teddy May de Kock, He Should’ve Seen It Comin’. She describes in a Laurie Anderson rhythmic vocoder kind of way the treachery of dating an artist, and the grisly end of a partner.
Dial 3 for Stewart Home, Sex Talk With A Hooker His piece is prank hotline requesting someone with circus or contortionist skills. Both parties are delighted by the spontaneous banter, so humorous and different from the humdrum requests. Stewart is an artist, filmmaker, pamphleteer, writer and activist.
Dial 4 for Jack Paton, a member of a three-piece punk band from Glasgow called L, which eschew Google. But a quick search reveals their track My Sister’s Baby on the Lanarkshire Auricular Research Council website. And no wonder, it’s the perfect invention of a song. Each part was written and recorded independently, then mastered without anyone listening to it. The band attempted to play along with the unheard track at a live gig. Imagine Monty Python meets Karl Stockhausen meets Suicide, a confluence that could quite possibly be the essence of genius.
Jack’s poem Sometimes I Think is a reflection on whether he’s sure or unsure if really likes himself, or not. If you stay on the line there’s a gap, then you will hear L’s unreleased track A Rock.
Dial 5 for Kirsty Allison, the author of a novel called Psychomachia about a protagonist who goes to Ibiza unsure whether or not she has killed a rock star musician who raped her. Her piece G.O.D is both an acronym of, and a response to Gates of Desire. It is perhaps the most conventional delivery of the prose pieces, describing a peripatetic day in the life of lovers.
Dial 6 for Luke Overin, Bone Idle Connection Psalm is a dialogue inspired by a Punch and Judy show and voiced with Punch’s swazzle, a mouth instrument. It’s a treatise on sleep deprivation from child rearing and the quirky sound is distinctly caring, with a call and response between parent and child towards the end. Luke is a writer and lecturer, and City Wall Radio hosts his sonic landscape Marsh Fever. https://mixes.vuiz.net/Citywall/marsh-fever-w-luke-overin-july-2025
Dial 7 for Carmelle Safdie, Electricity in the Home is a satisfying listen. The instructions from the 1950’s manual on the correct use of domestic electricity are sung at you, like an electronic opera. Carmelle also makes beautiful enamel and metal sculptural pieces and jewellery inspired by images in the manual.
Dial 8 for a haunting composition by two artists, Divine Southgate Smith and Emmanuel Awuni. It’s seven minutes of tuning the heavenly sound of strings and flute. The sprawling frequencies collide to produce the sweetest hold music for a telephone call there ever was.
Dial 9 for Deas McMorrow, The Flummery of Life is a sweet rumination on attraction and desire. Her beautiful offerings are delicate musings directed towards a lover. Deas is part of the trio <3 with Lene Tassin de Montaigu and Harry Bix, whose harp is a magical driftwood sculpture and the fourth member of the band that activates the sound.
Dial 0 for Jon Watson, Chains of Desire, A new piece of prose by the bass player of seminal punk band 999. Some readers may recall the powerhouse lyrics and driving rhythms of Emergency (1978). James is a conservator of Jon’s recent artworks, which arrive in the post decorated with a frontispiece photocopy of a beautiful model introducing them. Chains of Desire is performed as a duet about the harrowing encounter of a young couple in love.
Dial * for Yelena Zhelezov, Hedonistic Bliss tells the erotic tale of how she once fu**ked someone into a coma, and what happened just before that. Yelena is a conceptual artist working in sculpture, video and text.
Dial # for Eddie Peake, The Pervert Soliloquy, the longest of the recordings, separated into three parts. It’s a dark, twisted confessional which James first heard in a gallery in Antwerp. This compelling voice has been given a second life as part of 020 Desk Zero.
Overall the works are a response to how desire is discovered or activated. The ideas of activation and transmission are enthralling for James. This year he exhibited two transmitting artefacts on Sloane Street for Frieze Studios Modern Nature; a large Aluminium sculpture, also named Gates of Desire, and his phone cards handed out at the other end of the street. As people telephoned Desk Zero and wandered passed the sculpture, James believes a symbolic synapse occurred between his artworks and the callers.
Photo: Damian Griffiths
When he’s not transmitting sound, James is skimming stones on the world’s highest freshwater lake, Lake Titicaca, in deepest, darkest Peru. It is from there he has just returned, hence the backpack. He tells me about The Yavari, a former warship, now a ship museum on Lake Titicaca. The Yavari and another steamer The Aurora, were dismantled in London around 1870, then carried on a perilous trek over the Andes, to be re-assembled on the shores of the lake, where The Aurora, is reported to have sunk laden with passengers in 1876.
James headed to Titicaca as soon as he heard that a member of a group of motorcyclists working on The Yavari was propagating rare Peruvian orchids on motorbike batteries. It was this transmission that sparked James’s obsession for his next collection of floral sculptures, having previously cast a number of bronze tulips inspired by a trip to the tulip pastures of Uzbekistan, which he describes as, “Beautiful bubble satellites waiting to picked.”
Two forthcoming books on the publishing arm of the Desk Zero imprint are the incisive and hilarious debut poetry collection, Running with Words by Steve Belowsky, (https://internationaltimes.it/interview-with-poet-stephen-belowsky/ and Wrongness, the debut novel by Ruth Novaczek, who features in 020 Desk Zero, Dial 1.
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