Words
Friday, August 14th, 2009
I know I’m desperately late to write about this project, but someone just told me about it and I wondered if you guys heard of it already.
It’s called the Shelley Jackson Skin Project. Shelley Jackson invites participants to tattoo one word on themselves- one she chooses. All those words together are a story. Nobody knows the story except for the participants.
I can see the art behind the concept. What makes me uncomfortable with the idea is that she calls particpants “words”, as though the word on their skin is now their whole of identity. A word they haven’t chosen themselves. Her last three lines in her “Call for Participants” epitomizes that to me.
“Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words.”
I would not disvalue this project, I think it’s fascinating. But I would not participate. Would you?