Welcome to 1001 Unread Messages!
I’m collecting text messages for an art project!
1001 Unread Messages is an art project that includes three components: open art-making workshops, a gallery show featuring art inspired by digital artifacts/ephemera, and the making of a new devised performance created with the verbatim language from text message exchanges- all aimed at exploring modern relationships, communication, and the exquisite mundanity of care.
1001 Unread Messages is in development, and is being supported by the Conjuring Joy Residency at The Painted Bride in Summer 2024.
So - i’m looking for submissions of text message chains!
I’m looking for text exchanges between romantic partners primarily. all relationship styles, orientations, and configurations are needed!
how to share: USE THIS FORM!
1: if you text from your computer, you can highlight and copy/paste the text of a thread. You can submit the text here by making it into a doc and uploading it, or entering it right into the submission box.
2: take a screen recording and scroll through your text thread.
3: take screenshots, and upload them to this form.
Screenshots and screen recordings are great for pictures and images, while copy/pasting is good for sharing longer threads.
If you’d prefer email or your files are too large - you can send the screenshots, screen recordings, or copied text to 1001unreadmsgs@gmail.com. You can use WeTransfer if your files are still too large.
note: all submissions will be anonymized! if you submit via the form, your email address will not be recorded.
how will they be used?
-some will be made into drawings or embroideries.
-some will be used as text for a performance. they may take the form of dialogue or song lyrics. we will use them mostly verbatim, though we may play with the order, cut or move things around, and play with repetition. here’s an example of a song made with texts between a married couple.
why texts?
By limiting the text to the verbatim found-language of text exchanges, focused on romantic partnerships of all kinds, the piece will offer an exploration of modern relationships, how we communicate with and care for each other, how we heal within relationships, and how that all plays out in our modern, technology-driven world. What can this tight lens teach us about how we connect and what we value? What if we looked at the texts between romantic partners the way we view revered love letters of the past?
This project takes seriously something often considered flippant or mundane. It theatricalizes hyper-specific pieces of real relationships in order to uncover broader truths. It celebrates intimacy and care. It seeks to find a way to incorporate and center technology onstage, which has taken up the center of so much of our lives, in a way that is not alienating- that focuses on the human and everlasting, not the sleek newness. In form, it will blend genre, drawing upon my study of physical theater techniques. Each text exchange will teach us the way it needs to be staged.
what should i submit?
Any text message threads between romantic partners or intimate relationships! Could be a one night stand, could be someone you went on a few dates with, could be a casual relationship, could be a spouse, could be a group text of a polycule - and anything in between! Don’t worry about what may be interesting, it takes all sorts of exchanges to create something. While it is nice for us to have quite a bit of material from one thread, no submission is too small.
Upcoming Workshops and Events for 1001 Unread Messages
Drop-In Open Art Making Workshops at The Painted Bride:
Saturday 7/6 2-5pm
Thursday 7/11 5-8pm
Saturday 7/13 2-5pm
Work In Progress Showing + Gallery:
Thursday, 7/18 6:30-8pm at The Painted Bride.
More about Francesca, creator and curator
Hi! I make devised performances as a director, writer, and performer. These start with a particular question or provocation. Each piece creates the form and genre that it needs to be. In my performance-making practice, I think of the process of creating new work much like a kind of active, embodied research. With collaborators or solo (but always in conversation with others), I tackle an area of inquiry. A performance is the sum of all of those hours of reckoning, considering something through emotions, individual and collective experiences, and physicality. Alongside performance, I make cheeky visual art that is often literally cheeky: drawings, rugs, embroideries, and animations that celebrate sensuality and eroticism, and/or engage with experiences of depression. Across mediums, my work seeks to disempower shame and taboo through radical honesty and voyeuristic delight. I want to clown around about the things we aren’t supposed to talk about and create work that is as pleasurable as it is terrifying.
I create work that is personal and intimate in an effort to reveal broader truths, and create connection through vulnerability. I make invitations to myself and my audiences to laugh ourselves out of rigidity, to marvel at how simultaneously silly and tragic and stunning it is to be alive and have a body, so we can remember we are not alone and accept ourselves and each other with compassion.
Sometimes, I invite audiences to contribute directly to a project. For example, while quarantined in 2020, I created a project - 31 Days of Selfies - where people could submit selfies for me to draw. They came in from friends, acquaintances, strangers- and helped build connection in an isolated time, and invited people to see the beauty in the lines of their and others’ bodies.
1001 Unread Messages is an extension of my practice of creating performance collages out of non-theatrical found text, and of creating artwork using submitted material.