The 100 Day Project #23

Invisible City - She Writes

Tucson, Arizona, USA, 2008

The 100 Day Project, Day 23

A woman's hand arcing across concrete with chalk the color of a lemon's pith. It is a simple gesture, often invisible. A gesture made by women for eons. Writing, recording, marking on surfaces throughout time.

How many women's hands have held chalk — crafted words for others to consume, to learn from? Chalk words. Temporary by design. Fleeting. Easily blurred. Washed away.

Aren't we lucky bitches to live in a time when women's writings, their words, ideas, voices, and research are published, disseminated, and shared at a level never before experienced in human history.

My words can reach a woman in Japan in milliseconds. So. Freaking. Cool. Miraculous, even.

And yet the platforms are not neutral. They were designed by specific people with specific blind spots, and those blind spots are built into the architecture. Algorithms decide whose voice gets amplified and whose gets quietly filtered out. No surprise — it is women's voices that pay the price.

Content that centers women's experiences, that challenges power, that speaks plainly about injustice — this is exactly the kind of content that gets suppressed, shadowbanned, deprioritized. A newer, faster way to wash away the chalk.

So yell with me into our technological megaphones: WRITE ANYWAY. On whatever surface you have. All the surfaces you have. In chalk, ink, charcoal, thread…whatever you have in arm's reach. Tell your story with your words. We need to see you. We need to hear you. We need to know you.

This is the hand of poet Wendy Burk, photographed during The Invisible City — a five-week, site-specific experimental arts lab exploring public space in downtown Tucson. Co-directed by Lisa Bowden, the project was a collaboration between NEW ARTiculations Dance Theatre and Kore Press, a Tucson-based feminist press. More than 20 women artists came together to create texts, dances, sound pieces, film, photographs, and drawings within the urban core — envisioning and activating new workspaces out of vacant parking lots, city plazas, and sidewalks. You can purchase Wendy's collections at KorePress.org.

About the 100 Day Project: A global creative challenge where thousands of artists share a piece of their practice every single day for 100 days. I'm joining creatives around the world, and I'm excited to bring you along. Each day I'll be sharing one of my photos — some recent, some old, and some from my current project — along with the story behind it: where I was, who I was with, and why I love it.