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For her first solo show realised in cooperation with Helsinki Contemporary between 27 November and 20 December 2015, Pilvi Takala carried out a free text message service that enabled anonymous, personal conversation with Invisible Friend. The exhibition’s title piece has closed on Sunday, 10 January 2016.

In less than two months (16 November 2015 – 10 January 2016), Invisible Friend reached over one thousand users and nearly 18.000 messages were sent through the service.

Text messaging with Invisible Friend was completely anonymous and private. Each Invisible Friend was created in the mind of the user with the support of a team of writers. The writers took part in the conversations without any agenda of their own, and their improvised replies were based upon the user’s input.

”Some users approached Invisible Friend with intimate questions or problems in look for an outsider's perspective. Often, it was a matter on which the user was not able to speak with anyone else. Part of the message exchange was pure verbal play or poetry. There were also some fully fictitious stories in which the user defined the role of the Invisible Friend”, Takala concludes.

The service fostered an intuitive form of thinking leaving space for imagination and immediacy in the minds of the user as well as the writer.

”Behind the scenes it was fascinating to see how Invisible Friend took shape in the users’ imagination, but the same thing happened in reverse. Writers’ perceptions of users could be shattered and completely re-formed as a result of one message. Anonymous text messaging left room for imagination”, Takala describes the writers’ experiences.

Read more about the exhibition.