Laundry has played a significant role in histories of social exchange. In the early 1900s, before the wide availability of washers and dryers, clothing cluttered the skies of cities like New York, where lines of cable and rope not only supported freshly laundered clothes, but also inspired casual conversation across fire escapes, courtyards and streets. Windows left ajar at the end of these rows helped to foster a sense of openness and community. Fast forward to the 1980s, commercial laundromats were, for a moment, popular meeting places and pick-up spots. Like Facebook and Match.com they were sites for strangers to connect. Amid essential machines rested pool tables, televisions, arcade games, toy and candy contraptions (buffers) that made for more comfortable conversation in a socially awkward environment. Today, there still underlies, as artist Tracee Worley has written, “a robust network of communication and exchange” in the context of laundry. But in the course of washing, drying, and folding nowadays, particularly in laundromats, people tend to keep their dirty clothes and identities to themselves.
Starting at her neighborhood laundromat, Worley began sticker-bombing laundromat washers and dryers across New York City with her brightly colored Dirty Laundry decals earlier this year. She also mailed them to friends, family and other contacts in cities, such as Oakland, Chicago and Atlanta to do the same. Later recognizing the tack boards and blank walls of laundromats as “unofficial billboards,” Worley began to produce a familiar form of guerrilla advertising in this setting—posters with tear off numbers. To date, The Dirty Laundry Line has received hundred of calls, from California, where the artist was born, across to Algeria, where she knows no one. No matter where calls originate or if the voice is recognizable, Worley prefers to remain aloof—rather than insert an officious voice she simply offers a service. Post Secret, an ongoing community art venture where people mail in their secrets anonymously on a postcard; and I Apologize, Allan Bridge’s 15-year confession-line project, might come to mind. Though influenced by the Situationists, who believed that one had to create an environment in order for change to occur, the artist’s background in social work is foremost. Social workers help enhance the lives of people, groups, and communities. They help others come to terms with a situation, to cope, work together, and heal. Social workers interact, but as neutral observers largely absorb information. With The Dirty Laundry Line Worley is, to a degree, present, but callers have to “deal with their own shit.”
As The Dirty Laundry Line was emerging, Worley presented the concept for a collaborative project called Gargoyles Against Street Harassment (G.A.S.H.) at FEAST 2009. Female victims of lascivious, demeaning and other troublesome statements made on the street are prompted to text these remarks, as well as their location to a designated phone number. The information is then entered into a public Google map. The objective of the project is not only to illustrate areas of occurrence, but more so the types of statements that constitute harassment, especially those which men deem harmless or complimentary. Again, Worley has chosen the role of social mediator, using phones and other modern technologies as a means of connecting individual threads and people to a larger social web. G.A.S.H., which is still in development, has since been renamed for an invented female Catholic saint, who seeks to mend spirits broken by male harassment on the streets: Our Lady Who Walks: The Patron Saint of Women Walkers.
The Dirty Laundry Line too bears a relationship to Catholicism and reconciliation. Not unlike the confessional, it is an outlet for one to speak their sins aloud without fear of reprisal, to exorcise the soul. The exception here is that every participant has a chance to sit on the other side of the booth—callers can listen to the anonymous admissions of others. A few punches on the keypad or a scroll through the website reveals a propensity for stealing and adultery. While some tales are small and humorous, “I have been stealing toothpaste from work” or “I was jonesin’ for some chocolate…so I took somebody’s Kit Kat Bar”, others are heavy and poignant, “I think marriage is a fucking sham.”
In the age of social media, where phones and other forms of communication are ubiquitous, it seems that “dirty laundry” is, at all times, in the public domain. One’s unmentionables, so to speak, are proudly laid out for everyone to see. Hence, our unsociable nature in laundromats seems rather inappropriate in this age of (too much) information. Perhaps The Dirty Laundry Line is that thing we’ve been waiting for—the new social tool we didn’t realize we needed until now.
Photograph courtesy of Hrag Vartanian