Today, I was in the Media section of Borders Bookstore in Lee's Summit, Missouri. While flipping through some intriguing biographies of random ("macro")celebrities, I stumbled upon two of Frank Warren's PostSecret books. While my mind rifled through all of my past posts (and reminded me that this blog post had to be up by midnight tonight), I smiled and picked up the The Secret Lives of Men and Women.
A friendly employee noticed that I had pulled it off the shelf, and said, "Those books are cool, huh?" I jumped at the opportunity to turn his friendly remark into an informal interview.
I responded, "Yeah! Why do you think people like them so much?"
He shrugged, "I guess people get sick of Hollywood bullsh*t. That stuff's real."
This may not be a valid source to use in my project; I don't even know the guy's name. But his comment confirmed one of my KYHOIs*: Authenticity is highly valued, but limited to anonymity in its expression because of our contradicting value of self-presentation.
Of all the KYHOIs* I plan to present this week, that is likely the second-most important one. When deciding where I fit into the bigger story that we're trying to tell, we concluded that "The PostSecret Effect" works best as the final element.
I'm really excited about that placement; I will be able to pull the markedly and defineably human elements from everyones' topics to show what deep connections look like in our current context.
How we are simultaneously fighting anonymity and using it.
How we can connect through disconnection.
How complex this thing we call the "self" is and how we respond to a deeper personal discovery of it.
How, regardless of the medium, art is still art and can still shatter us in the best way.
It's critical that these sites I'm looking at all claim to be "community art". My presentation will have to be highly visual, and so will probably resemble the talks that Frank Warren does at PS events. To ensure the comprehensive point that I'm going for, I want to address what the PS effect has to do with each element of our project. I almost have one KYHOI* for each part! So at the moment, I'm compiling pictures and writing (and re-writing) my points to match up with them.
I do intend to record my 5-minutes presentation. That will be up on Friday.
So come back then to find out all of my *knock-your-head-off ideas!
-Katie
I'm reminded of the power and beauty I experienced in 3rd grade when my whole class tied letters to helium balloons and launched them into the sky. Weeks later we received letters from people who had found them. So I guess there have been examples of this particularly powerful form of anonymity for quite some time - the message in the bottle is another example
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