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“Key to the City,” Paul Ramirez Jonas’ public art project based in Brooklyn, New York, distributes keys to different locations throughout the five boroughs. A Key to the City kiosk, located in Times Square, distributes the nifty and stylish keys, complete with a guidebook and ceremony, for Ramirez Jonas maintains:
“One to one, one at a time, all of the time, thousands of keys will be bestowed by thousands of people on thousands of citizens for thousands of reasons that deserve to be recognized. Keys to cities are traditionally given by a mayor to a hero or dignitary, symbolizing that they can have free entrance to the city. This new Key to the City belongs to us, and is awarded among ourselves. We will give each other the key to our city for private reasons that exist outside of history.”
Lauren Burke, 26, is using “Key to the City” as a social experiment: can she find the individual with the “key” to her heart? Burke, a rather enthusiastic and energetic Manhattan lawyer, is using the pseudo-scavenger hunt project (which includes 24 keys) for a series of 24 different dates. Naturally, Burke has a blog, documenting her experiences with each chum.
Of the project, Ramirez Jonas asks, “Can you make something that’s for everyone, but [something] really intimate at the same time?” Social networking sites, despite their many voyeuristic pluses, are potentially alienating and atomizing, so Jones wants to change the face of, well, Facebook-like applications and the way that people network these days. Ramirez Jonas and Burke both reveal that there can be an artistic dimension to how we relate.
Burke’s sentimental and sincere blog feels so familiar, like the real-life Carrie Bradshaw spilling on universal episodes of anticipation, glee, and disappointment inherent to the experience of dating, meeting new people, and getting to know one’s self. On her most recent date, Burke felt a connection with Avi, whom she’d been chatting online with for a couple of months. Despite a fun, energetic date, Burke learned that Avi was beginning a serious relationship with someone else. Reflecting on the unfortunate circumstances, Burke reflects:
“We were literally talking just as I had gotten to the part where I was going to share how excited I was for the next date! He was wonderful and sweet and kind but my body still had that horrible reaction you feel when you realize you’re going to be disappointed (stomach plung, tingling limbs). And it felt very very sad. I’ve had a lot of fun on the dates, and definitely like some of the guys, but with Avi it just seemed like smooth sailing from the get go. But what can you do except hope that this is a sign that something even more magical is on its way with an old or new adventure … “
Who can’t relate to this sentiment?
Burke’s project is the convergence of yesterday, today, and tomorrow’s dating worlds. Specifically, Burke impresses me by demonstrating how dynamic a person can be in the digital world, where one’s interests, quirks, and “likes” are reduced to impersonal and, often, meaningless gestures at one’s computer.
It is an interesting moment in that not only has the prevalence — and, at times, necessity — of Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and related social networking sites exponentially increased, but there has been a total revolution in the standards of dating and meeting people. It seems so long ago that internet dating was totally sketchy; now it’s totally accepted. Burke’s project flies in the face of such efforts to control how we are perceived through any of the aforementioned networking sites and discloses herself honestly and publicly amid the hyper-self-conscious nature of social networking sites.
Personally, I am not very versed in internet dating, but Burke’s approach does seem innovative to the iPhone generation of young people.
What do you guys think?
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Thank you so much for your lovely post! I’m always looking for a good newfeminist blog and I think I’ve found one :)
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