Finding Catharsis as a Community
Mariel Quadrino
I am using design as a means to explore catharsis and relief in a public setting. New York City can feel lonely at times and the pandemic has made it even harder to create a sense of community. Catharsis, an emotional release of unconscious conflicts, can help improve mental wellbeing. We spend a lot of time interacting with social media and digital spaces, so I made something more tangible and direct.
I created a series of interactive posters that I put up around the neighborhood of Tompkins Square Park with simple prompts such as “What’s your deepest secret?,” “What makes you angry?” and “What’s your deli order?” These prompts invite strangers to share their thoughts, feelings, and secrets anonymously, creating an asynchronous conversation within the community.
The small radius of about five blocks aims to connect people living directly in my neighborhood. Once the posters fill up, I collect them back and combine them into a printed zine. While the posters themselves are not up for very long, they are transformed into a zine, making them into a permanent, but still informal, form of documentation. I created an Instagram account for the project (@anonymous.posters) that documents the process from the posters to the zine.
The cycle of making posters and zines will continue. Eventually, I will compile them into a book, produced annually, that extends the longevity of the project and creates an archive of the continual progress.