Miranda July Will Send You Emails from Lena Dunham and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
If you've ever wanted to know what it's like to correspond with the likes of Lena Dunham, Kirsten Dunst, and the still inspiring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, well, this is your chance to (sort of) do just that. In a project from multi-hyphenate artist Miranda July called We Think Alone, you can now sign up to receive "compendiums" of emails from the aforementioned celebrities and others including Rodarte designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy, Israeli author Etgar Keret, and photographer Catherine Opie. The first batch comes on July 1, and today marks the beginning of the sign-up period, according to July.
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But don't get ahead of yourselves. The emails will not be personalized, nor will they be directed to the audience of We Think Alone in some sort of mass celebrity chain letter—the participants will select emails they've already sent. But that's still kind of the most culturally direct email forwarding service ever, right? July writes: "...while none of these emails were originally intended to be read by me (much less you) they were all carefully selected by their authors in response to my list of email genres — so self-portraiture is quietly at work here." So in a way, this is a voyeuristic look into the lives of notables, but one that's curated by the notables themselves.
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On We Think Alone's site, July describes how her desire to get friends to forward her emails they sent elsewhere was the basic inspiration for the project, which was commissioned by an exhibition space in Stocklhom. "How they comport themselves in email is so intimate, almost obscene — a glimpse of them from their own point of view," she said. "WE THINK ALONE has given me the excuse to read my friends' emails and the emails of some people I wish I was friends with and for better or worse it’s changed the way I see all of them."
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We're also interested to see who uses emoticons.
