Tag Activation

 

  Welcome to the Peace Tag Project! The purpose of this site it to give some context to the Peace Tags that probably led you here.  My goal in doing so is that, by sharing some of the ideas behind them, you will be inspired to wear them. Moreover, my hope is that this inspiration soon becomes less to do with what you read here and more to do with the meaning that you make with them in your own life.

So hello, all of you so-called Strangers, whoever, and wherever you are! I am grateful to everyone who has taken time out of their day to look into the Peace Tags.  My goal, if I succeed at nothing else, is to create and give away as many Peace Tags as possible.

In the United States, and elsewhere around the world, people have been laying coins down on train tracks for the better part of 200 years; It would not surprise me if those who watched the first engine on earth approaching them on the first tracks laid down on it, looked down at the rail and wondered; What would happen to the coins...? And proceeded to find out.  Soon the same scene would play out in America on some hard-won stretch of track. Oh, to clutch that very first nickel!

Between now and then, how many times has this scene played out? In how many places? How many folks, having never heard of it  before,, stood by the rails one day when a train approached, thumbed a few coins in their pockets, and considered; what would happen to this coin if I...."  And there have always been those who hestitate, considering a tiny disc of metal between their fingers; what if I derail the train! 

For all these years then, since the tracks were laid, a kind of uncelebrated tradition has been spontaneously kept alive in a subterranean cultural milieu, with an unknowable list of participants who came for the trains and left with souvenirs; novel tokens that would jangle in their pockets for weeks.  My fellow citizens! The time has come to recognize, celebrate, and reflect on this unique and quirky custom! The mere act of people putting coins under the wheels of a train may not be unique to the U.S.,  but the significance of doing so here is another story altogether. I may be biased, but to me, it's the Story of all stories! As I begin-here in the blog, and and in pages to come-to tell this story-to the best of my abilities, naturally- I would like to pay homage to this underappreciated subterranean custom of laying coins on the tracks, by taking it one step further, turning the train-flattened coins into Peace Tags.

The Peace Tag Project is, after all, a commemoration of sorts. And a recognition, not of how we collectively, historically have made meaning in America in what was done with the train, but rather, of how individual Americans thru history have made a connexion with the train, in their own private moments. My contribution, therefore, is not meant to be materially aesthetic. Instead, it arises from a seizure of  aesthetically undervalued materials to inscribe an idea.  It's not that making tags is not a form of play for me, or that Ido not take aesthetic tangents. But the five dashes that get hammered onto the edge of every piece, that is where the play gets deep. And that is where the real story begins.

Peace Tags are a co-creation with the freight trains, and a ritual act; laying coins on the rails, meditating on the train as it's passing, and gathering up the newly minted medallions when it's gone. Some coins get run over by two, or even three trains before I am satisfied. I want them to have a certain look and feel. The more flattened and marked up the better. I love to get them as thinned out as possible; they are not only easier to work with this way, but they look, feel, and sound better when they clink around in my pockets. I want to liberate the metal from the coin, and although some tags lose all signs of having ever been coins at all, many bare attributes of what they were. The more flattened and banged up, the better!

Hot of the press, into the pouch. Out of the pouch, I study them. There is so much to admire in each piece I am reluctant to alter them further, but the mission requires it!

In a way, every coin that gets squashed by the train gets liberated in the process. Knocking them out their fixed ontological positions, the train shuts them out of one world as it jolts them a step back toward the world from whence they came.  Betwixt and between these two states they will remain, suspended in liminality.   

In your possession you have some combination of what used to be U.S. pennies, nickels, dimes, or quarters.  But possibly, 50 cent pieces, silver dollars, golden dollars, or coin currency from another country altogether. Coins, all of them. Each coin is virtually identical to countless others like it.  Before they were created, however, these individual pieces were a part of one another. They were each other. Aggregates of metal in the earth.    

The train squashes each one. The speed and the weight of the train, the type of coin or if it has any microscopic debris on it, the surface of the wheel, the condition of the track where it meets the wheel, how close to the edge the coins are placed on the rail, all of these factors effect the imprint. After the very first wheel passes over it, the coin moves; it may fall off, or stay on the rail for any length of time. Two quarters get laid down, virtually identical, or maybe 100, but no two emerge the same. 

Then I come in. I rough them up even more, hammering and stamping. The tags get stamped with words, phrases, numbers, images, and symbols.  Less is more, but sometimes I have away at it.  To me, each tag comes out a work of art after the train crushes it. Still, I must activate them somehow. Embed the code. Signify the process. Authenticate the goods! I add my moniker "Change" to indicate each tag has been subjected to the ritual. Each one bares the name of the city in which it was flattened and stamped. Each has the year it was pressed. Lastly, five slashes get hammered along the edge of every piece, representing precepts in a paradigm for change; they are the five precepts of a forthcoming book, The New Mythologies, first anticipated here.

For now, suffice it to say, the tags are made with two purposes in mind. One, they are gifts, made for the purpose of giving. Two, they exist to make meaning with. This act of creation with the freight trains involves a double transgression: Trespassing on private property & defacing money. By wearing the tags you participate vicariously in the risks taken to make them. And by that fact I hope they bring you courage to take your own risks as you enter ever deeper into the process of making real meaning.

All of the tags I have made and will ever make are descendents of one original set. If you are curious about the original set of tags, and moreover, the real story of how the Peace Tags came to be, I give a detailed account in my blog,  Deep Play in An Anarchist’s Repertoire.  

If you still need a set of Peace Tags, or have gifted the ones you had to someone else, send me a request via snail mail and include a self-addressed envelope with two regular postage stamps.

Last but not least, if you have the time and don't mind doing so, please email me a photo of your tags and I will add them to the gallery. If you want to include yourself and/or your surroundings in the photo, even better!

Peace, 

Change