I wrote out my first memory today. It was a kind of recycled one, borrowed from the old ‘passing moments’ project that I half started a couple of years ago on a trip back to the desolate wastes of Troon. It’s the ‘phantom punks’ one… or the fake plastic punks as it’s now become. It’s important to change your memories subtly as you get older, after all. I’m going to leave it here in the Boston Tea Party, maybe just on the table or maybe slipped between the cushions on the sofa. I wonder who will find it? I wonder if anyone will read it, and what they will think. I wonder if they’ll use the provided postcard to respond? So many questions.

So yeah, that’s my project for the year. Secrets and Memories. At the moment the project comprises a plastic bag holding a number of items: a 9cm square photograph, a hand-written memory sealed in a 9cm square envelope with the memory number written on the front, a stamped addressed postcard on which the finder is asked to note where and when the memory was found and with a space in which they can jot down a memory of their own should they so wish… I can’t decide if this is a mail-art project or what. I guess in some respects it is. I don’t know whether I’ll make a web project out of it either, although I suppose I will at some point. The plan is to leave memories at various places throughout the year. I guess a fair few will end up being left here in the Boston, and I may ask various collaborators to distribute them in far flung places, but that’s for the future. And the secrets? Well I’m thinking those will be very rare, maybe only one secret per twenty or thirty memories… carefully placed, like underneath the cushions on the sofa here, or down the back of a radiator somewhere.

Is it a really naff idea? I dunno. I just need something to do that will enable me to discover my memory, which is notoriously bad. I have a lot of memories that I think are repressed for whatever reason, so think of this as part therapy, part art project. And aren’t most artists just undergoing self-therapy when they work anyway?

Comments

[Celia]

I think it's very poetic and that things like that are worthwile both for the lucky finders and you. Good luck with retrieving your memories. I've lost a lot of mine. Nothing bad happened to me, my brain's just lazy. I did think of taking ginko biloba supplements but thought increased blood flow to the brain could be hazardous.

Someone once told me that art should not be about therapy, that that was really a self indulgent abuse of the viewer and therefore crap. Personally I think that's rubbish, art is an exchange, and most people can identify with most other people's experiences. It can be good for the viewer too.

[h]

i will gladly be roped in as your accomplice. to the secrets and memories thing. except i will do it in portsmouth and boston because doing it in exeter would just be... well, i'd never get any of them back.

i saw the rosenquist show at the guggenheim earlier last week and it was lovely.

i also sent off my rather windingly idle discursive today.

i am also so frigging pretentious i could shoot someone.

actively homicidal, passively suicidal?
actively homicidal, absolutely nonsuicidal, more like.

"everyone else should die"
is better than
"i should die"

lots of love
mwah mwah mwah