What happens when you unleash 1,000 fancy journals into the wild? Determined to find out, Brian Singer, a 34-year-old graphic designer, started buying notebooks in bulk. Then he got one hundred artists and designers — among them, big names like Joshua Davis, Michael Mabry, and Gary Taxali — to do ten covers each. In August 2000, he sent all 1,000 journals out into the world. Some traveled abroad in the hand luggage of acquaintances. Others were sent to those who requested one via the project website. The rest were left in porta potties and phone booths around his hometown of San Francisco. Singer also asked participants to scan and upload their entries onto the site, hoping it would result in a collective record of the location and content of each notebook.
Six years, fifty states, and more than forty countries later, 998 of the journals are still out there documenting sob stories and art projects and random tidbits of creative energy input by people from all walks of life. Director Andrea Kreuzhage’s documentary, 1000 Journals, tracks down journal participants from Marseille to Zagreb and weaves them into the inspirational story of the designer whose curiosity blossomed into a global phenomenon. “We were all creative people at one point in our lives, and now we all go to work every day and sit in traffic. So…what happened?” Starting in Berlin, 1000 Journals is slated to tour the film-festival circuit throughout the year.