Davy Rothbart, the founder of Found Magazine, is a First Person Arts favorite who has brought his treasure trove of oddball found objects to two First Person Arts events, including an appearance at our 2008 Festival. He’s coming back to town on November 6th for the Found vs. Found Tour, a battle royale between Found Magazine and the Found Footage Festival for who has the cooler stuff, with $1 of every ticket benefiting First Person Arts programming. We asked Davy for more info on Found vs. Found, why he wants you to support First Person Arts, and for his First Person Festival picks.

How did you first become involved with First Person Arts?
I was invited to perform at the First Person Arts festival a few years ago and had an amazing time! I shared my favorite Found notes and some personal essays I’d written for the radio show This American Life. I really loved both the festival’s premise and its varied and wonderful programming.

Tell us about the Found vs. Found Tour.
We’ve been collecting Found notes and letters and sharing them in our live shows on tour for almost 10 years, and only this year did we get to meet Nick and Joe from the Found Footage Festival, who for years have been collecting and sharing found footage from old VHS tapes. Their finds are ridiculous and they have a tone of respectfulness and hilarity that I really admire. We thought it would be a lot of fun to hit the road together for a series of mashup shows, share some new and all-time favorite finds, and raise some money for local organizations we really love and believe in.

Why did you choose to make it a fundraiser for FPA?
First Person Arts puts on amazing programming through its festival and year-round. We thought it would be nice to raise some money to lend support to all the fine work FPA does, and also to help build local awareness for First Person Arts, especially with the FPA Festival coming up the following week!

Sadly, you can’t attend the First Person Festival this year. What are your top Festival picks that you would go see if you could and why?
PYPM — I always love seeing kids perform and marvel at their skill, energy, and creativity. To glimpse our future writers, thinkers and leaders sharing what’s on their mind is a real thrill.

Post-It Note Diaries – Starlee Kine is one of my favorite radio personalities; her This American Life stories are charming, funny, thoughtful, and affecting. And Arthur Jones is an extremely talented artist and brings a hilarious presence to his live events. This is sure to be the highlight of this year’s Festival, not to be missed!

Stripped Stories — I love hearing people’s secrets. What could be better than a few honest souls baring it all?

What’s next for Found Magazine?
We have a new issue coming out around Valentine’s Day, and then next year we’ll be hitting the road for months on Found’s 10th Anniversary Tour. We’ve also got a lot of other exciting special projects planned. Stay tuned to our website and our Facebook page for more updates!

Get tickets to Found vs. Found in Philly, November 6th, at Johnny Brenda’s here.

A champion of first person arts (and First Person Arts), Miss Koco’s established a nice archive of projects in what we might as well call Distributed Documentary: “Distributed,” because it is not all collected at one time, but “Documentary,” nevertheless, because it does adhere to a single collection point.  Here’s one she conducted for a year in 1998-1999:

the door, 1998-1999

For a year I asked people who came to visit me to sign and leave something from their wallet, bag, or purse on my door.

It’s a visitor tax, levied entirely in ephemera:

Check out the rest of the collection HERE.

Davy Rothbart, with Found Magazine, has built the world’s largest ‘door’ and encouraged millions of people across the world to deliver to it an astonishing array of found items-scraps from the lives of others–fragments of stories that form a far less time-bound or geographically centered picture than Miss Koco’s “the door.”  But for what his found objects lack in narrative coherence, they gain in sheer wonder and, in some cases, voyeuristic indulgence.

Rothbart will be at the First Person Arts Festival, Friday November 14th with a collection of some of his found items.  Miss Koco, we’re guessing, will probably be there too.

Found
Location: Painted
Bride
Time: 7-8PM
Cost: $10

Davy Rothbart,
founder of the wildly popular underground magazine Found (also
a book and website) weaves some of his most fascinating finds into an
energetic presentation. Join Rothbart for his entertaining
elaboration on the stories behind the cast-off notes and letters
plucked from the nation’s subways, schools, streets and
sidewalks.

Davy
Rothbart, creator of Found Magazine, is a collector,
author, filmmaker, and frequent contributor to the public radio show
This American Life. The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas, a
collection of Rothbart’s short stories, was published in 2005
by Simon & Schuster, and Geffen Records recently released
Rothbart’s documentary film How We Survive about
the punk rock band Rise Against. Rothbart lives in his hometown of
Ann Arbor, Michigan.

And exhibit of
Found items will be on display in the Painted Bride Gallery
throughout the Festival. Audience members are invited to contribute
their own discoveries to Found’s collection of anonymous
ephemera.

Tickets are available for advance purchase here.