Project ISM is about fame

When Andy Warhol said that "In the future, everyone would be world famous for fifteen minutes", he really had no idea how and when it would come to pass. Andy had never heard of the internet - nobody had, it was the sixties and he was merely observing the commodification of fame and predicting an epidemic of self obsession. It's a cute irony that the articulation of this meme alone would capture Warhol plenty more than his fair share of global fame.

Now in the Noughties, the future has arrived and you are the most important person alive. But what will you be famous for?

The internet is a very big place and despite the best efforts of corporatists to sell and resell tired sterotypes or funnel sanitized content through sponsored portals, the discerning and inquiring can still eke and seek to sate any bent. And now, so it is with fame.

Project_ISM grants you the opportunity to collect your Warholian fifteen minutes while experiencing the exhilarating liberation of public nudity. Warhol himself was shot by a psychotic feminist with three hot bullets but you can do it all by yourself, free of inhibition and creative boundary, with a digital camera.

Your folio will feature on the front page of www.ishotmyself.com for 24 hours and be viewed by people all over the world. Even after your time is up and the folio slips into the archives, your self-portrait will remain available to our sponsors - philanthropists whose prurient curiosity funds the Project, enabling us to pay you a fee for for your effort. But don't do it for the money. Do it for art, do it for yourself, and do it for Andy.

- Project_ISM Team

Project ism is about adventure

In the year 2001, American photographer Spencer Tunick was invited to an arts festival in my home town of Melbourne, Australia. Tunick photographs real people, nude, in public places. I recall seeing a novelty news story several years ago where something like fifty people had answered Tunick's call to be photographed naked in a New York street. This seemed impossibly audacious to me. Who were these people, whose sense of adventure or mischief eclipsed all vulnerability? Certainly I was not one of them. I could never be.

When the Melbourne Fringe Festival invited Tunick to town they hoped maybe a few hundred people would turn up. It was early spring and the call was for dawn; the forecast was for a frigid, rainy morning. They didn't get their few hundred volunteers. They got over four thousand, and one of those was me.

What motivates people to do this? We did it because we thought we never could. There was probably a sprinkling of voyeurs and exhibitionists, but mostly these were ordinary people. Women who modestly cross their legs on the bus, men who check their tie in elevator mirrors, girls who stress about visible panty lines - we all got nude together, without fear or judgement. And made art history as part of the largest nude portrait ever created.

The most published (and some of the most beautiful) pictures from that day came not from Spencer's camera, but from the press gallery. This seemed ironic to me until I realised that for most of us, it was never about the picture at all. I was fortunate to meet Tunick the next day and found him possessed of a coy humility. I pointed out that his Nude Adrift world tour saw ever larger flocks of people falling naked at his feet, then talking of epiphanies, healings and new beginnings. I couldn't help but ask, "are you the New Messiah?" Tunick just smiled.

~ Zöe Zee, a Project_ISM Contributor