The Bureau of Self-Recognition

The Bureau of Self-Recognition is a conceptual art project designed to track the process of self-recognition and its myriad outcomes. Through individual exercises, spatial investigations, video and audio recording, lectures, and experiential performance, the Bureau will bring together the clinical and the personal in a unique institutional environment.

Funding successful!

The Bureau of Self-Recognition Indiegogo campaign was successfully funded on March 25th. A huge shout out and major thanks to the following generous individuals for making this possible: Esmé Wang, Alan Bass, Amy Lucker, Andrés Colapinto, Bill Dietz, Carolyn Wakefield, Carson McWhirter, Clara Bosak-Schroeder, Clay Hapaz, David Andersson, Drayon Hiers, EIDIA House (Melissa P. Wolf and Paul Lamarre), Eleanor Anderson, Erin Fae, Erin McDonald, Heidi Kleister, Hrag Vartanian, Jean Ann Douglass, Jeffrey Hamilton, Jessica Hallock, Jim O’Grady, Jonah Spear, Joshua Blake Edwards, Kelly Rowan, Kristyn O’Reilly, Lexi Suppes, Lynn Xu, Lynne De Silva-Johnson, Mack Elder, Megan Gendell, Megan Hays, Michelle Whittemore, Mitch McEwen, Mollie Eisenberg, Nikki Giardina, Olivia Gunton, Parker Phillips, Rebecca Loewen, Rob Andrews, Ruben Reveles, Sarah Pinder, Shirin Sabahi, and Travis Tench.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Jessalyn and I will send the book to print hopefully tomorrow. More updates soon.

One second every day. This project addresses some of the concerns I’ve been having lately about the over-production of digital materials for the sake of documentation. It also gets at some of the thoughts I’ve been thinking about with regards to aggregation. 50 years of life = 5 hours of video.

The only place I diverge is that I don’t think there’s any pressure created by the project to “do something awesome every day.” My focus would be on the emphasis of simply getting (and maybe selecting) the one second. Each second makes the “something awesome” as we add it to the next. And on and on. And so on.

New year, new process(es).

It’s January 1st, 2013, which means that the Bureau of Self-Recognition’s Free Consultation program is now over.

The project generated approximately 1.3 gigabytes of material, which is both more and less than I thought: more because I started with zero, and less because I expected that more people would submit video footage. Of course this estimation does not include text, but text shouldn’t add much to the data load.

Of the nearly 30 people who requested consultations, I was able to keep in close (or relatively close) touch with 13. I had a few more who officially resigned, and the rest fell away or never quite began the process.

I am going through all submitted materials in preparation for the Bureau of Self-Recognition book which will be released later this year. I’m also looking forward to releasing an online platform that will allow people to continue working on these exercises without my support.

Happy new year to you all! Here’s to new processes, structures, and lenses.

“I’ll say ridiculous things throughout this process.” (Free Consultation with Dave Thrasher.)

” There’s part of my brain that’s feeling a need in a lot of different areas of my life that it would be more useful to come up with good ideas that can sustain themselves than just good ideas.” (Free Consultation with Dave Ruder.)

There is no such thing as the self. (The self is a process.) From TEDxRheinMain.

Very Ed. (Link!)

For his second exercise, Ed was asked to, “make note of things in the world that you feel are ‘very Ed.’ You can note these things by photographing them or drawing them. All that I ask is that the things you note are not things of your own creation, but rather things that you encounter. (Things need not be objects; they may also be places, moments, conditions, and so on.) The things that you note will constitute another mirror against which you encounter yourself.”

In response to this prompt, he made his own Tumblr. It’s a beautiful journey.

You can find Ed’s other activities here.

Free Consultation with Blake Morris.

“There’s some tension between recognizing what one wants in some kind of independent selfness as opposed to making decisions in community with others and not necessarily getting what one’s unique, independent preferences might be. It’s kind of a false dichotomy.” — from Free Consultation footage with Laura Braslow.