In the late 80s, I took a summer job delivering White Pages telephone directories. At the end of the job, about 30 or so of the 5” thick books remained. Instead of recycling them, I thought I might be able to use them somehow later on, so I stacked them up in my bedroom closet and forgot about them.
A couple years later, I was in a visual arts class in college. We were to work on one project for the entire semester: a self portrait. It could be any medium we chose and the professor encouraged creative thinking. I thought about it for a couple days, and came up with an idea that I was very excited about.
The class met once per week and consisted of a short lecture about the history of self portraits and various mediums and styles. The remaining time was to be spent working on our projects. Everyone did, except me. I’d check out what others were doing and then go about reading art books and magazines. Everyone assumed I had no project idea and was struggling to come up with what to do. Eventually, the professor asked if she could help, but I assured her that I had it handled and would be ready to present my piece on the final day of class.
As you might imagine, weeks went by and the other students started to become resentful. They were painting their faces in colorful oils on large canvases, making abstract shapes of the human form with pencil or pastel, molding detailed life-sized busts out of clay, and I was reading magazines.
On the final day of class, it was time for our presentations. Each student showed their piece and shared their thoughts about the project, as well as the challenges of working with their chosen medium.
When it came to my turn, I asked for a moment to prepare while I went out to my car and brought in a cartful of White Pages telephone directories (the ones from my closet). I made a clear area on the floor in the back of the classroom and laid around 30 books on the ground. I opened each of the books to random pages, revealing thousands of people’s names and their contact info — a black and white symbolic display of real lives and experiences, reduced to sterile, flat information. One book, which I placed near the center of the spread, was opened to a bookmarked page — the page with my name, address and phone number. To further the sentiment, I then took a thick marker and circled my name, then drew a line from that circle and at the end of the line wrote the word NOBODY. I then stepped back and said, “here is my piece.”
Unlike the other conversational presentations, the room was now silent. The professor then said that at the start of the class, she encouraged us to try something different, to approach this project outside the usual means. For this, she was grading my project an A.
The student next to me yelled out, “This is bullshit!” and stormed out of the room. I never saw them again.
After class, I asked another student if they could help me haul the phone books out, and they were surprised when we stopped at the dumpster and I threw them all away.