A writing project for India

I received an email from a member of the Shambhala newsgroup mentioning this interesting writing project which is currently underway and seeking submissions.

It’s not too late to get involved and sounds like such an interesting project.

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I wanted to ask you to participate in an art project I am working on, which will take place beginning on April 26th and be active for 3 weeks in Mcleod Ganj, India.
The project will consist of a communication between people both living in and traveling through McLeod Ganj. Mcleod Ganj is an incredibly international tourist site in the foothills of the Himalayas. More importantly, it’s also the home of the Dalai Lama, and the political center for Tibetans in exile. The population here includes tourists who stay for any length of time, Tibetans who have just left Tibet and come here often planning to go back, Tibetans who are born here and see this as an inauthentic home, nomadic Indian shepards, Kashmiri migrant workers, and the list goes on.

From my perspective, the town’s transitory and international nature often creates a feeling of liminality, where people who are moving through the space are more free to be intimate with each other while remaining anonymous to each other in a variety of ways. The structure of this project, and that way it functions will seek to mirror this type of interaction.

The project involves 2 golden boxes which are shaped like New England barns. They will be situated in different parts of the town, and monitored by different people in the community during the 3 week duration of the project. Inside one of the boxes will be incense which has been blessed by the Dalai Lama. We will be offering people a stick of the incense. This offering is particularly relevant to this area, where many tourists come to see the Dalai Lama, and many Tibetans move here from Tibet to be close to him.

In the other box (this is the part where you will hopefully come in!) will be single page writings (poems, prose, letters, journals, any kind of writing!) that we will also be offering to people on the street. We will be encouraging people on the street to write something themselves to leave in the box.

I hope that you can contribute by sending me pieces of writing that you have done in the past or are working on now. Again, the writing can be any style, any type; a journal entry, a poem, a short story, prose, whatever. The only limitation is that each piece has to be contained in one page. The box will contain writing in many different languages, so you can also send your writing in any language that you choose. The more writing you send the better! So feel free to email me as much as you like.

I really hope to include as many people’s words in this project as possible, so forward this to whoever you think may be into it!

If you are interested in submitting any material, please email e.g.tobin@gmail.com and include the writing project in your subject line.