Suffering for your art

Regular readers of this blog will know that "I want a word" is far from being the only community writing project out there in cyberspace. You may, in particular, remember plotastic!, a project run by Texan Mark Putnam.

None of the other writing projects I have yet come across, however, are quite as unusual as the one that I was introduced to yesterday. One of my myspace friends left me a comment about a writing project "where people around the world got one letter from this book each tattood on their body somewhere". At first the idea just seemed a bit too outlandish to be true, but I was intrigued enough to investigate further, and after a bit of googling, I eventually stumbled across the home page for the "Skin" project, coordinated by artist and writer "Shelley Jackson.

In her owns words, Skin is "A story published on the skin of 2095 volunteers", and she goes on to elaborate further:

"Each participant must agree to have one word of the story tattooed upon his or her body. The text will be published nowhere else, and the author will not permit it to be summarized, quoted, described, set to music, or adapted for film, theater, television or any other medium. The full text will be known only to participants, who may, but need not choose to establish communication with one another. In the event that insufficiant participants come forward to complete the first and only edition of the story, the incomplete version will be considered definitive. If no participants come forward, this call itself is the work."

It sounds fairly crazy, but at the same time also rather cool. And in a world where strageness sells, Shelley has received a lot of media attention, and it seems, a large number of willing volunteers.

Where, in my humble opinion, the idea has problems, is that it sounds like a logistical nightmare. After a willing participant contacts the author, she then chooses whether to approve them as a word or not. If so, she sends them a disclaimer, absolving herself of blame in the event of "health problems, body image disorders, job-loss, or relationship difficulties that may result from the tattooing process". Assuming they agree to that, they are then sent a word, which they are free to tattoo on any part of their body (although font and colour restrictions are applied).

The project began, as far as I can tell, in 2003 and Shelley has (as of December 2006) received over 10,000 applicants for the project. Very impressive indeed. Less impressive is that so far 1409 disclaimers have been returned and around 470 words have actually been tattooed. Don't get me wrong, I am still hugely impressed that the project has got that far. I know how difficult it is to run a writing project and must take my hat off to Shelley for getting it that far along, but I'm guessing it's going to be a fair while longer before the project is complete.

Reading about this project has also given me a shot of confidence. If there are ten thousand people out there who are prepared to tattoo a word on themselves, then surely there a are ten thousand people who are willing to cotribute a word to a book. Of course, on the other hand, I suppose it's possible that "I want a word" just isn't extreme enough for the modern world....

I guess we'll find out in due course!

Take care, and I hope you're thinking of your words!

Chris

http://www.iwantaword.com/