The interactive WORRY BOX PROJECT website was created in Flash and is no longer accessible to users / viewers. A project demo can be viewed on this page.

THE WORRY BOX PROJECT (2011-2021) was a participatory web-based archive of maternal anxieties based on the concept of a collective virtual worry box: visitors to the website were invited to anonymously submit a written worry; they were also able to view the anxieties and dreams of other women. As anonymous anxieties were collected, I hand-transcribed each submission onto a sheet of paper that was placed inside an actual physical box. This participatory stage of the project was ongoing and updated regularly with new worries. The handwriting process was documented on video, and the resulting videos were returned to cyberspace to be viewed online. The time-consuming process of writing and videotaping the anxieties invested each submitted text with the labor of craft and a kind of sustained attention different from the automated posting of text onto an online bulletin board or forum.  Posited against a contemporary motherhood culture that is often relentlessly optimistic and positive (often at odds with the anxieties of modern parenting), the virtual Worry Box Project provided a safe collective space for women to express fears, worries, and negative feelings about motherhood.

THE WORRY BOX PROJECT has also been exhibited as a gallery installation for three video screens.

THE WORRY BOX PROJECT in Studies in the Maternal

THE WORRY BOX PROJECT gallery installation (Complicated Labors, 2013)

THE WORRY BOX PROJECT and listening in SoundingOut! by Fabiola Hanna

THE WORRY BOX PROJECT hybrid book, created and exhibited by the Procreate Project Archive

THE WORRY BOX PROJECT in MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Docubase: an interactive curated database of the people, projects, and technologies transforming documentary in the digital age.

The Longest Shortest Time on THE WORRY BOX PROJECT