Cube Blog

“Red and yellow and pink and blue, purple and orange and green. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too.”

For one week in September 2006 Hannah Godfrey, writer, artist and Skateboarder ran The Ribbon Project.
On each day of the week Godfrey handed out and posted to participants in Bristol and beyond sets of ribbon.
Each day was a different colour . The aim being that participants would tie ribbons in their locality. A celebration of unmarked things which when intervened by tying ribbon to them encouraged enjendered alternative narratives in these interventions in the public space by passers by.
Coloured ribbons has various different associations. Girls hair is tied in them, Easter Simnel cake, cutting the ribbon, launching a boat, wrapped around presents, The Maypole. All of these celebratory in some way. But also serious issues, red ribbon for world aids day, pink for breast cancer, white for peace.
This project feels somewhere in between these two ideas. Prehaps the personal really is political here ?
Why Godfrey chose the different colours for each day we don’t know.
But this is not an HSBC advert or the united colours of Benetton campaign. It has more to do with DIY sensibilities, mail art, fluxus. pschyco Geography and the playfulness of the film Amelie.
Godfrey became a curator or ribbon tyers anoynomous. Carriers taking the ribbon to intervene with the location of their choice that means and meant a different thing to each and every one tier in place, location and country. Signifiers mapping peoples responses. Ribbons infiltrating the city through ideas.