collected fears

For the project "Collected Fears" people were asked to write down anonymously what they were afraid of. I received 683 reactions. Participants ranged in age from five to about seventy. They were approached in the streets, at work, at home or at school. I had noticed fear to be a great motivating factor in myself – and I do not believe to be unique in this. I do not experience fear necessarily as a bad or unwanted emotion, but it does strike me as odd that something so important is so little discussed on a personal level.

After the notes were collected, I showed them in various ways. After interesting but ultimately dissatisfying results from showing the notes themselves, I moved toward a digital, more neutral version of the texts. A great advantage to the use of digital type is that all responses suddenly appear formally the same: There is no longer a visual difference between the responses of, for instance, a child and an adult.

The replies are gathered together on twelve large billboards, which can be put up anywhere. All of the replies are used in the work, as they are all equally important. The phoney and the evasive replies are very much a part of this collection, as is the fact that some answers came back almost a hundred times and others turned up only once.