2011, 2015, present
Remember Me began with a small piece of paper and a familiar phrase from the internet.
When you log into a website, there’s a little checkbox sitting under the password field: “Remember me.” I took a screenshot of that checkbox and made it into 2-inch-wide magnets. Then I started sticking them on things around Chicago.
The magnet is the artwork. It goes out into the street and talks to people.
Somebody walking to the bus stop looks down and finds two words from a login screen stuck to a fence post. Just a small white rectangle saying, “remember me”. The magnet lifts off with two fingers, so anybody who wants it gone can have it gone.
The pair
Once a magnet is placed, I photograph it, twice. One photo goes in close, so you can read the words. The other shows the scene, so you can see what the words are stuck to.
I love this coupling. The close shot gives you the physical surface beneath the magnet: the gritty rust on a fence pole, the thick yellow paint dripping down a bridge girder, the marker tags on a mailbox. You can feel them. These surfaces are often as important visually as the magnet itself.
The pixels of the digital checkbox sit against these intensely physical textures. Something that originated as a tiny piece of digital world has been pulled from the screen and placed into the physical world.
The wider photograph changes the meaning again. Now it isn’t just a checkbox. It’s a message left in a public place. Against fences, bridges, buildings, mailboxes, signs, and other things encountered along the street.
Remember me
But remember who? And remember what?
Online, “Remember Me” is an ordinary convenience. You check the box so a machine doesn’t make you type your name again. The computer is offering to remember you.
Out on the street, that flips around. Now items on the street are asking you to do the remembering. And the thing doing the asking is a fence, or a life preserver, or a bicycle.
- On a mailbox: postal mail. Suggesting a person writing a letter to someone far away.
- On a life preserver: a life is worth saving.
- Behind the bars of a door: that looks like a jail. It can suggest someone asking not to be forgotten while separated from the rest of the world.
- On a garbage can: we throw things away so casually.
- On a white memorial bicycle. A direct memorial for remembrance.
- Over graffiti: this one took me a while. I don’t like the destructive nature of tagging. But tagging comes from a person wanting to be remembered.
These two words can be a request, a warning, a memorial, a plea, a joke, or an invitation depending on where they are placed.
The phrase comes from one of the most mundane pieces of digital language we encounter, but taking it from the screen changes it. The computer asks whether it should remember us. The magnets ask whether we will remember something (or somebody) else.
The project is therefore caught between two kinds of memory: the artificial memory of a computer and the human act of remembering.
What does it mean to remember someone? What makes a person or place worth remembering? Who gets remembered? Who gets forgotten?
Remember Me began in 2011 and continued sporadically through 2015. I have not made new pieces in several years, although the project remains open. There are still plenty of places for a small “Remember Me” magnet to go.
The Division Street walk
On July 10, 2011, I walked two miles down Division Street, from Halsted to Western, placing magnets the whole way. A torn-down housing project, industrial Goose Island, two river bridges, a train overpass, the expressway, Wicker Park, a hospital, and a high school at the end while I waited for the bus.
29 diptychs came out of that afternoon. One street, one phrase, and continual new meanings from the street: Remember Me on Division Street in 2011
Other sets
I will be pulling images from my archives and posting them soon (or later, if I remember. Get it? Remember.)
- Various places, July 9, 2011
- Downtown, July 12, 2011
- Wrigley Field, July 15, 2011
- Logan Square, July 31, 2011
- O’Hare, August 19, 2011
- Paris, August 2, 2015
View on social media
- Facebook album (36 photos)
- Flickr tag “remember me” (3 photos)
Materials
- Screenshot of a “Remember me” login checkbox
- Magnet width: 2 inches
- Metal surface in the environment
- Ability to be removed by anybody
Still open
I haven’t placed one since Paris on my honeymoon. The project never ended, though. It just went quiet while I did other things, and every metal pole I walk past is still eligible.
So: what would you want remembered? And where exactly would you stick it?
