Annual leaves and holidays seem to support regressive impulses: Nearly unvoluntarily one stops in front of a souvenir shop to inspect rotating displays with postcards on it. They definitely have a charm of their own – small-sized cardboards with the aura of authenticity, indicating in a special way that “I was here”, as if there weren’t enough selfies and WhatsApp-posts to support that claim. Quickly written and quickly sent, these relicts of a faraway time in which messages were handwritten, postcards seem to provide for a proof that someone has really been far away and happily came back, enriched by experiences of alterity.
This aura of the analogue, which provides a short insight into the inner life of a person distantly on his route, is being exploited by an art project since many years. Postsecret.com provides post office boxes in many countries of the world, where people can send in their postcard, anonymously revealing a personal secret. A simple and ingenious idea: One can utter something which can not be told by word of mouth; nor could it be written down, because one would need an addressee who would draw his conclusions. But Postsecret.com makes this secret public, and maybe the cathartic effect (and affect) to finally got rid of something which was a heavy burden can be enjoyed in anonymity.
Can we conceive of a digital counterpart of this analogue art project? Only if there are still users there who believe in anonymity in the net. But it is true that literally every activity in the net leaves traces – and why should I reveal secrets in the net and thus become in one way or another susceptible to blackmail?
Praise for the good old hand-written postcard of confidence: Every mailing is an original, every self-made postcard is unique.
kplex-project.com 