The Hundreds

In December 2021, cultural theorist Lauren Berlant and anthropologist Kathleen Stewart published a small book titled The Hundreds, in which they co-wrote mini-essays of 100 words only that reflect on how it feels to be in the world, a world that is deeply weird and yet utterly ordinary. How do we exist in this strange tension?

The bits of text in the book are like provocative prose poems, and the writing process undertaken by the pair has been described in many ways. The authors themselves note that they’re “separate people trying to stay in sync and to take in what isn’t, to work with the heat of a proximity that echoes, extends, or hesitates into forms of life.” In his review of the book, Matt Morgenstern says the pieces involve a process of “looking around in unorthodox ways and being surprised at what you may find dwelling there.” Another review highlights an attention to ordinary happenings and how they emerge; the description of the ordinary, through a kind of heightened perception, can provoke an alternate awareness.

So, here’s what we’re thinking: let’s collaborate on our own few hundreds. Rather than two authors, there will probably be more; rather than just writing, there may be the visible and the audible; and rather than finished projects delivered at the end, we invite you to dip in now and again across the next month and reflect together on the ordinary.

Tentative Guidance

• reflect on the uncanny nature of the ordinary, and what it feels like right now.
• add to, revise, rewrite and remake whatever you find
• respect the constraint, okay? 100 words!
• we don't know what the constraint means for media, so be creative
• maybe think about writing with others in a strange mediated sense of being-with-without-being-with