Learning to Love You More, a groundbreaking participatory art website hatched in 2002 from the minds of artist friends Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July and run by Yuri Ono, has gathered its multi-disciplinary projects submitted by the public into a collection by the same name. The book, edited by Fletcher and July, will be available in the U.S. this month.
Much like its successful postcard-based peer PostSecret, Learning to Love You More consists of work from people from all walks of life. However, unlike the anonymous PostSecret, artists and writers sign their pieces, called “reports,” and often provide anecdotes relating to the circumstances of the submission. Each report is created in response to an assignment concocted by Fletcher and July.
One of the most compelling and interesting assignments on its website, #55: Photograph a Significant Outfit, received over one hundred reports, some of them touching (“What I wore when we kissed in the rain the first time”) and some silly (“I wore this outfit when I tripped some LSD and The Arcade Fire blew my mind”). Most of the reports, however, tended to be both cathartic and poignant (“I was wearing this outfit the last time I saw my mother — two days before my birthday, four days before her unexpected death”).
Learning to Love You More is an effort to construct a collective history in a time when reality television has ransacked the public sphere. The website, which now has over sixty projects and 5,000 contributors, has also spawned displays and exhibitions in unlikely places — senior citizen centers and grade schools, for example — consisting of work from the site.
The collection is already available in the UK, but those in the US will have to wait until the 20th of September to get their hands on a copy. Until then, you can head over to the website — and perhaps submit your own report. Assignments #54 and #16 are highly recommended.
Learning to Love You More
www.learningtoloveyoumore.com
Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July
Paperback, 160 pages
$19.95, Prestel Publishing
www.prestel.com
Release: September 20, 2007