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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Postsecret

20:53 / 31.03.05

mods: sorry if this is in the wrong place, I wasn't quite sure where to put it.

Postsecret
It's a blog that publishes people's secrets. Simply mail a 4x6 inch postcard to the address listed at the bottom, with a secret and an illustration on it, and it will be posted (anonymously of course).

Usually, I'd think something like this was stupid and pretentious, but I actually like this a lot. I'm even considering sending in a postcard of my own.

23:49 / 31.03.05

I've been looking at and thinking about this all night, and I am literally on the verge of tears. Some of them are just so fucking personal and intimate and honest and vulnerable.

really, go there now, it's incredible.

07:26 / 01.04.05

Are you aware of grouphug.us, TeN? It's an online version of this, essentially. And, if anything, more troubling.

elpis eutropius

07:38 / 01.04.05

I find these more poignant than grouphug.us, probably because the medium is chosen/made by the confessor, and most of these are handwritten. They feel more personal.

I'd send one but I don't have many complete secrets and I kind of like keeping them.

Tryphena Absent

08:29 / 01.04.05

Do you think that this is an art project?

11:12 / 01.04.05

It really makes you think. Which is all a piece of Art really wants to do. I'm not ashamed admit a couple of them made me cry.

The weird thing is after reading it, go out to the shops and look at the people milling around. How many of them have secrets like that?

11:27 / 01.04.05

Do you mind me asking, which ones made you cry?

11:50 / 01.04.05

'I still haven't told my father I have the same disease that killed my mother'

'I hide who I am out of fear that people will see me as I see myself'

The first one strikes hard as I was almost once in the position where I would have to tell my mum that I had the same thing that killed her mother.

And the second I don't know why.

Tryphena Absent

12:02 / 01.04.05

Earlier, before my last post, I almost put a request through to move this thread to conversation but as I was writing in the box I began to think about the purpose of a site like the one we're talking about. Blogs have a lot of different purposes- practical use, diary, sometimes they just read like a person's thought stream but I think a site like this falls perfectly in to the confessional tradition of contemporary art. When you think about it alongside Picasso's portraits, Emin's tent, cows in formaldehyde. A lot of art made in the 20th century and now (Ataman...) is made for the purpose of revealing some truth about the way that people live and I think this site to an extent falls in to that tradition. So, for that reason I think you've put this thread in the right place.

... it's a good art project. I can't wait to sit down and read more of the cards.

17:42 / 01.04.05

The pins in the condoms one is terrifying.

as is the "I love one of my children" one.

I wonder what percentage wind up on the site.

19:45 / 01.04.05

smoothly - actually, this site was posted in another forum, which is how i found out about it, and another user also posted the grouphug.us link. I agree with seraphina that this site is much more personal and impactful than grouphug, but both are very interesting.

and about it being an art project - some of the cards have actually been displayed at a gallery, along with blank cards which the visitors were encouraged to write their own secrets on. I think some of the ones by those visitors are on the site (the handwritten ones without illustration, I'd guess).

One of his comments reads, "The following card was one of the few that were defaced while it was on display at Artomatic. I think the comment adds to the meaning of the card and reminds us that many of the secrets we keep are not as strange or shameful as we imagine. It also shows the courage of the poster and the support of the viewer - something I have felt throughout this project." The card shown has the words "I love black girls and I am white." on it, and someone has written below it in pencil "(It's OK!)"

I think the commentary he makes, and the commentary of other people that he posts is almost as interesting as the cards themselves. In a way, this qualifies as as much of an experiment in psychology and sociology as an art project.

Tryphena Absent

21:08 / 01.04.05

I think a lot of art projects are intensely sociological and psychological... Kuba, Time Zones - particularly Fikret Atay's Rebel of the Dance, pictured below (my favourite exhibition last year) and Doris Saleco's Unland: audible in the mouth is without a doubt the most intensely psychologically focused object that I've ever seen in or out of a gallery.

This is an experiment but Unland did something to my insides that the postcards can't quite manage.

00:18 / 02.04.05

I think a site like this falls perfectly in to the confessional tradition of contemporary art. [...] A lot of art made in the 20th century and now (Ataman...) is made for the purpose of revealing some truth about the way that people live and I think this site to an extent falls in to that tradition.

It reminds me quite a bit of the Fluxus movement - the "mail art" thing, the participation from many people, the decidedly non-Fine Art aesthetic, and also the feeling of upheaval or maybe social transgression in revealing the secrets of everyday people.

I think one thing that separates it from other dirty little secret type blogs or websites is that participants make a thing, and give it up to the project. Unloading one's thoughts anonymously by typing on the Internet is typically a fairly casual, almost compulsive, act (hello, Barbelith!) - but creating a physical object and ridding oneself of that object seems to have more symbolic or ritualistic weight.

04:16 / 02.04.05

I think one thing that separates it from other dirty little secret type blogs or websites is that participants make a thing, and give it up to the project. Unloading one's thoughts anonymously by typing on the Internet is typically a fairly casual, almost compulsive, act (hello, Barbelith!) - but creating a physical object and ridding oneself of that object seems to have more symbolic or ritualistic weight.
Indeed some of the postcards within that site you can see the way in which they have done their cards is like a ritual baring of the soul. Also the feedback from some of the people involved show how they felt after, some seemed relieved.

The person who typed something like 'once a secret's been told it's not a secret', actually sums up what I was thinking about the whole project. You can tell your secret without negative feedback from anyone you know or likely to bump into and it's in a way more easy to carry within yourself.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:13 / 04.04.05

That's really quite beautiful...
"I tell everyone I'm an atheist but I believe I'm going to hell" really got me for some reason.
I think I'll have to come back to it later... it's all a bit much to take in.

Tryphena Absent

12:57 / 04.04.05

The one about the mother's ashes made me quite happy.