Schlepping bags of dirty drawers to your local Laundromat can be a cleansing—and awkward—experience. Those of you who make this trip regularly can agree. As you’re loading and unloading the week’s (or maybe month’s) pile of stuff, neighbors and total strangers are packed right next to you—bustin’ stains and avoiding eye contact.
Tracee Worley observed this routine interaction at Laundromats across New York City, and witnessed its artistic potential. As one of this year’s Create Change resident artists for the community arts organization, The Laundromat Project, Worley created The Dirty Laundry Line, an interactive experiment designed to encourage interaction by inviting people to anonymously call a hotline to “air out their dirty laundry.”
Billed as “part confessional, part peep show,” The Dirty Laundry Line taps into the often-strange level of privacy found in such a public space.
“People usually keep to themselves, despite ample opportunity to interact with one another,” Worley said. “Yet hidden amidst this web of isolation lays a robust network of communication and exchange. NYC Laundromats, along with neighborhood cafes, barbershops, bodegas and lampposts, have become unofficial billboards for local communication. I wondered if this unofficial community bulletin space could be appropriated to provoke interactions amongst Laundromat customers.”
Launched this summer, the line has provided an open environment for some hilarious and well, honest, confessions. From workplace toothpaste pinching to the classic case of a cheating lover, callers have been letting it all hang out.
“I am surprised most by the overwhelmingly voyeuristic response to the line,” says Worley. “Since the line was created in August, hundreds of people have called, spending several minutes listening to messages that other callers have left, but do not record a message of their own. So while the line is certainly a space for exhibition, it has mostly been used as a voyeuristic space. Perhaps that speaks to the innate eavesdropping, Peeping Tom in all of us.”
Wanna listen or leave a message of your own? Visit the website to find out how, and get your neighborhood in on the action.
Last 5 posts by Andrea Boston
- On My Mind: Beauty Mags Have it All Wrong - March 8th, 2010
- Fresh Vinyl: Teena, Sister Nancy, Fleetwood Mac - February 10th, 2010
- The Purpose Finder: A Conversation with Jullien Gordon - December 29th, 2009
- Meet the Band: Brokn.Englsh - November 18th, 2009
- The Uniform Project - November 2nd, 2009
