Shakespeare, it's not -- ERIC TUCKER checks out a bathroom graffiti exhibit, where one man's drunken scrawl becomes another man's art.
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
¶ Meet Alex Kotch, bathroom artist. (AP Photo/Stew Milne)
Potty-mouthed musings left on bathroom walls may not rival the poetic grace of a John Keats or the earthy reflections of a William Wordsworth.
Even so, women and men have memorialized trips to restrooms across the Brown University campus by scribbling messages that vary from profane to political, bawdy to contemplative.
Those scrawlings form the basis of a sound-art installation on display at the Ivy League school this week.
"It's kind of half just thinking it's great and funny," said Alex Kotch, 22, the Brown senior who designed the exhibit. "And half of it actually is an artistic attempt and also kind of relates to some sort of (societal) and gender issues."
Like many a novel idea, Kotch hatched his artistic vision after a visit to the bathroom.
Last fall, he journeyed to bathrooms around campus and jotted down messages left anonymously. (A female friend collected written samples in ladies' rooms).
Kotch then recorded his male and female friends as they recited the scribblings word-for-word. Those recordings are played back simultaneously through multiple stereo speakers in the room, creating something of an atonal effect for visitors to the exhibit.
The exhibit, housed in a small room with two (non-working) toilets, features audio recordings of actual words and phrases found in bathrooms throughout Brown. Visitors are encouraged to leave their own messages on the lily-white walls.
"The root of it is that I'm a music student, I'm a musician, I'm an aspiring composer. I'm just very attuned to auditory stimuli, I guess," Kotch explained.
Tame examples? "Make love not war" and "Abortion is not homicide." Vulgar examples? Too many to be repeated here.
A bowl of markers invites visitors to write their own thoughts, and by Tuesday night, some guests had already accepted the offer.
"My life is in shambles. Would you like to have sexual intercourse?" was written in elegant cursive. Another message: "I feel I am losing any semblance of a grip on reality."
Kotch produced transcripts of the messages divided by gender and restroom location. In general, writing in the men's rooms leans toward the lewd -- a bawdy, blush-inducing stew of expletives, body part references and sexual language worthy of a pornographic film.
The messages in the ladies rooms are typically more reflective and philosophical, Kotch said -- though those too are often not squeaky clean.
"If this were to be made into a movie or whatever," he says, "we'd certainly get the 'R' rating."
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asap contributor Eric Tucker never writes on bathroom stalls.
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