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brownpaperproject, 2007  |
brownpaperproject is a work in hiatus. in 2007 i began asking the general public to send me objects wrapped in brown paper. i created a text-only website that contained the full list of participation rules. the objects had to be wrapped in unmarked, unprinted brown paper, using only clear packing tape. participants were only asked to provide a first name in place of a return address, and the promise that their parcel would never be opened.
brownpaperproject addresses the idea of a binary gender system as the archetypical categorization tool in our society. by asking participants for a first name, i had enough information to "classify" the participant into a binary organizational system based on my projection of their gender identity. (the first lens is represented here by anonymous/uneducated judgement). then i organized the packages according to each participant's gender; but rather than categorizing "his" and "hers", i chose the terms "either" and "or". because the term "either" denotes more than one thing, the binary slyly becomes a tertiary. participants that i deemed were "male or female identified" were classified as "either" and those that had names that lacked gender signifiers were classified as "or". this work allowed me to step back from my more intensely laborious projects and address other issues in my work--queer identity, gender dissent, and categorical separations between people. these issues of classification and organization are present in each of our lives, and i believe the foundations they are built on are questionable. brownpaperproject is an attempt to bring some of these issues into the light. |