PostSecret

Presentation

Bond internecret is a collaboratif artistic project organized by Frank Warren, born with the end of the year 2004. The artist proposes to receive postcards in which the shippers reveal a personal secrecy anonymously. These charts are then exposed each week on an Internet site of the type Blog.

In France, Daniel Latif created, in 1998, a site named javoue.com and writes a book on this subject: I acknowledge all, contemporary Confession .

Rules of the game

Frank Warren invites each interested person to testify to a personal secrecy until ever revealed there. This testimony takes the imposed shape of a postcard of format running (10x15 cm), sent anonymously by the traditional postal network. The documents addressed by electronic way, such as digitized postcards, are not accepted. Frank Warren exposes then each Sunday on its Internet site a selection from 15 to 20 new charts among the hundred daily received charts.

The dispatched charts are postcards sold in the trade and personalized by their author (while writing there, while drawing there, by adding a photograph to it), or charts designed entirely by the shipper.

The participants become artists for the occasion are invited to take the following advice so that their secrecy is as well as possible represented:

• To be short - less words possible or more speaking.
• To be readable - to use letters of big size, clear and thick.
• To be creative - To let the chart be a support, a framework of expression.

Beyond these recommendations, Frank Warren does not impose a constraint on the contents which are addressed to him. It invites the reader to evoke feelings of regret or hope, to testify to funny or dramatic events, acts of kindness, daydreams, beliefs, desires or fear…

Project goes down for hearing

The site quickly gained in popularity and receives 3 to 4 million monthly visits. As example, the cumulated traffic passed from 28 million visits mid-April 2006, at nearly 34 million mid-June 2006, and more than 55 million at the end of 2006.

Derived works

Several books published by Frank Warren gather choices of postcards published or not on the site. They are appeared with the editions Harper Hakes/Regan Books:

• PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives (ISBN 0060899190)
• My Secret: In PostSecret Book (ISBN 0-06-119668-1)
• Secret The Lives off Men and Women: In PostSecret Book (ISBN 0-06-119875-7)

The project is the subject also of road shows to the United States since 2005.

French version

The French version of PostSecret at summer launched in October 2007 under the name PostSecretFrance

Satellite projects

Postsecret inspired several projects with comparable philosophy, putting back on the free and anonymous participation Net surfers, and based on the sending of numerical documents only:

• I acknowledge Site of confessions on line create in 1998.

• VeryLiberating, started semi-2006, authorize the publication of anonymous photographs.
• LivejournalSecret is a popular project in which the publication is daily and without restriction on the shape of the electronic document.
• Musicsecret is the musical version of LivejournalSecret.
• Notmysecrets.com encourages the visitors with poster the secrecies of other people
• Group hug publishes anonymous confessions collected by a simple electronic form.

Bonds

• Official site
• PostSecretFrance

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