Monday, January 25, 2010

Living Off Craigslist

This is a really interesting project.  A great example of blending art and life, living as a kind of performance, under a set of one's own brave rules.

Here is the statement from Jason Paul, the guy behind this project.  I also really like how his blog, which details the inetersting stories behind his adventures, is formatted mimicking the look of craigslist.
check it out!

My name is Jason Paul. After graduating from college with a bachelor’s degree in communication, I attempted to pursue a “conventional” job writing for a number of publications. I applied for over 180 positions, from small papers in Lawrence, Kansas to Boulder, Colorado.
After an overwhelming swell of rejection emails, I called the conventional lifestyle quits and decided to pursue an idea of my own.

My idea? To live my life off Craigslist.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

James Paul sounds like he's what Irving Howe describes as "The Modern Hero" in his essay "The Idea of the Modern." Quoting roughly, Howe says that modern heros (Hemingway's characters are his favorite examples) find themselves living in a world where normal codes of morality and action are reverse or absure (for example, fighting a war no longer leads to peace and justice, but only further violent blood killing). The Hero must then shift from a stance of "bravery," which entails action, to a stance of "courage," which often involves a mental acceptance or shift or state of mind. COurage often accopanies the traditionally cowardly act of running away or hiding, or what Howe says, secluding oneself unhappily in a hermetically sealed world dictacted by a self willed code. Its most interesting how his recent post shows other modern heros un/concsiously doing the same thing. Read the blog where the guy apologies for removing oil filters as a hellion kid? The Modern Hero's gone viral.