How are you stimulating your economy?  With toys, pretty things, maybe a party or two?  The possibilities are endless, but my favorite idea is this one, courtesy of Leisureguy:

 http://www.kiva.org

George will be delighted! 

If my blog looked into the mirror, reached in, and pulled out its opposite, it would be Buy-By Brian, Brian W. Jones's blog detailing everything he's purchased since August 2007.  His posts are artful and thoughtful, and he sent me a really sweet note about our respective projects.  In a way, it's much easier to define something in the positive, as he is doing, than it is to define something in the negative, as I tried to do with Fix.

Most interesting is Brian's categorizations of "want/need."  You can sort all of his entries this way, and it reveals telling things about our culture.  Honestly, many citizens of the world would label 100% of Brian's "needs" as wants.  But to be fair, many of the things he needs are culturally or socially dictated.  Or they follow a logic like, "if you're gonna ____, then you need a ____."  Drillling down this way provides a lot of insight into the parent activity, such as biking or working in a particular field.  The devil is in the details: if you read carefully, you begin to experience how even the most prosaic of choices can inspire serious reflection.  (Not that I know how this guy lived before all of his stuff got stolen.)  Enjoy!

Easy come, easy go.  So why am I so depressed about leaving my new tote in a cab last weekend?  Because I made it! (Admittedly, I had help, but still...)  And it was full of experiences: my notes for some art projects I'd been working on and 2 magazines I'd been using for reference for those projects.  Ugh ugh ugh.  I'm sure whoever found it just threw it out - it would probably look like garbage to anyone else.  I would have been much happier to have left my entire suitcase full of clothes and shoes!

A year of Fix actually made me more attached to things in certain ways: I feel like I really need the things I have/buy and I put more effort into the things I buy/have.  I think this is interesting: "material" is a dirty word in our super-consumptive society, implying that someone "just cares about things."  But someone accused of materialism in the conventional sense actually doesn't care about things but acquiring things; alternatively, he/she bases his/her self-worth on having certain things.  In reality, the more material we are - the more we respect the materiality of the things we have - the less consumptive we are.

The moral?  ALWAYS get a receipt from the driver!!! (I can't believe I didn't do that!) And if you find something do what you can to return it to the person, no matter how random the thing - you can't necessarily depend on the driver to do it.

Probably nobody is wondering, but just in case one little person out there is dying to know, I thought I’d update you on the latest in the smock experiment.  I’m back in the smock, this time without all the fall-winter layers underneath.  I love the bare legs and boots, as you can see in the photo below, but I will confess that it’s a lot of dress for the hotter/more humid days.  By the last days of this month – the end of this smock’s tenure – I will probably be sporting sandals and a tank and sweating to get to July 1.

A few things are different about it this time.  For one thing, the novelty’s worn off a little.  In 2008 I’m not not buying anything, so the transgressiveness of the smock being one of the few things I’ve purchased this year is moot.  I guess it was giving me a little charge every time I wore it.  For another, my office eliminated its dress code early this year, so the boundaries between the smock and my work clothes are a lot less clear.  It seems I liked the definition or divide it was providing between work and the rest of my life.  I was wearing it about once a week even with the dress code, but I would carefully consider if my boots looked nice enough or if the shirt I was wearing underneath was one of my “dressier” ones. Somehow these little subtleties made the experiment feel more rigorous.  Now I’ll just end up in it because I forgot to bring something else or I’m going somewhere after work and it’s easier not to change. 

Wearing it for every single thing may be closer to Andrea Zittel’s original idea for the smock, but my version of the experiment helped me make some very interesting distinctions between my social/art life and the other things that I do.  I started seeing activities as “in” activities or “out” activities, which didn’t necessarily correspond with leaving my apartment.  For example, going to the corner store to get a pint of milk is definitely “staying in.”  But going to the museum, even if I was going by myself and only to catch something quickly, is definitely “out.”  And certain friends I found myself more compelled to wear the smock with and others I didn’t; with my former neighbors, for example, I don’t always feel it necessary to wear the smock, even if I’m technically “going out.” 

All this has made me think very carefully about fashion and its role in my life. I’ve gotten really interested in the politics and subtleties of how clothes represent us, and I’ve been inspired to put together a few proposals for new performance projects about fashion.  I’ll let you know how everything turns out – a new blog may be in the works!