Swearline

An unused voicemail number led to the creation of Swearline. We created business cards, left them all over the city, and invited the public to call the number and swear. Thinking about the difference between swearing, obscenity and slurs (we heard all of them). We recorded, collected and catalogued hours of swearing ranging from the hilarious to horrifying.

A three sentence article about the project, written for the Chicago Reader, was picked up by Reuters news service - and suddenly the piece was written and talked about worldwide (Ireland, India, Australia, Germany etc.). We went viral when viral wasn’t yet a thing.

Created by: Jeff Kowalkowski, Bill Talsma, Mary Zerkel, Tyler Myers, Michael Thomas