Team Pick: “We Think Alone” Will Make You Love Checking Your Email

Cara’s Team Pick:

I’m always interested in what Miranda July is up to. Sometimes she’s making big-screen movies about Big Topics, other times YouTube-sized ones about blanket slugs. She writes short stories, exhibits in galleries, does performance art—and still apparently has time to wonder what other, different celebrities are up to. Thus her newest project, We Think Alone. For this nebulous art-thing, which has been commissioned by Magasin 3 in Stockholm but exists only in cyberspace, July convinced ten of her famous friends and acquaintances to share “emails they’ve sent to other people — to their mom, their boyfriend, their agent — the more mundane the better.” These emails will be packaged up based on themes (the first is “An Email About Money”) and sent out, every Monday for 20 weeks, to anyone who signs up. That’s right, anyone! Even you! Just go here and type in your email address.

catherine_opie

MAYBE YOU WILL FIND OUT WHAT AMAZING QUEER PHOTOGRAPHER CATHERINE OPIE SAYS TO HER DENTIST [VIA NY TIMES]

Most of July’s work focuses on human relationships — the interplay between words, gestures and emotional undercurrents, the depth inherent in the smallest interactions — so this real-world slice of the same makes lots of sense.  From the project description:

“How they comport themselves in email is so intimate, almost obscene — a glimpse of them from their own point of view…Privacy, the art of it, is evolving. Radical self-exposure and classically manicured discretion can both be powerful, both be elegant.”

OR HOW RENOWNED AUTHOR SHEILA HETI ADDRESSES HER MOM {VIA LA REVIEW OF BOOKS}

OR HOW RENOWNED AUTHOR SHEILA HETI ADDRESSES HER MOM [VIA LA REVIEW OF BOOKS]

The participants include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kirsten Dunst, Etgar Keret, the Mulleavy Sisters, and a bunch of other modern polymaths. TA;DR (too artsy; didn’t read): type your email into the pink box on this website and soon you’ll know whether or not Lena Dunham capitalizes “p.s.” I can’t wait, for real.

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Cara

Cara is a former contributing editor for Autostraddle and a current staff writer at Atlas Obscura. She lives in Somerville with her girlfriend, their roommate, and a cat who can flush the toilet, and is generally thinking about gender, sustainable biodiversity, and/or rock & roll music. You can follow her on twitter @cjgiaimo if you want.

Cara has written 113 articles for us.

11 Comments

  5. haha! this is awesome. i still get her “The Future” emails from when she was promoting that a few years ago

  6. Yessss Love Miranda July. Sometimes when I’m procrastinating I’ll figure out what she’s up to, which is usually interesting. Anyone else follow her Learning to Love You More project? I ended up buying the book and one day I might do all the projects just because.

  7. Thanks for this, now I have something other than doing my taxes to look forward to on July 1.

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