I am a diarist. Say it like you say painter, author, sculptor, dancer, musician.
Diaries are an art form, often a mixed media form of writing, drawing, painting, and even sculpture. Like all the other arts forms, the subject matter derives from the internal and external interests of the artist. Unlike all the other arts forms, diaries have an element no other art form has - privacy. Diaries are a form that thrive in the darkness, out of the public eye, hidden in drawers, closets, fire safes, and encrypted files.
Keeping a diary for over thirty-nine years has highlighted the membrane between the private and the public for me. Now the permeability of that membrane is increasing rapidly, with and without our consent. Social media encourages us to share. Marketing research firms request we fill out surveys. We wear headphones to listen to music privately and have private phone conversations waiting in line at the checkout counter. Those phones have cameras, GPS, and internet access so we can show anyone in the world exactly where we are, what we are doing, who we are doing it with, and what we think about it.
The quest to know and understand ourselves hasn’t changed but the new technologies and materials available to us present opportunities to look deeper in, farther out, and record and analyze more data. The relevant question has become what private things will we allow across that private/public membrane, and how, and in what form will we share it because anything shared with one person can be shared with everyone on Earth. Our lives are becoming open sourced.
All my art practice involves me creating a vessel for an aspect of my private thoughts and private life to travel in as it crosses through that membrane into the public realm.
