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.