since early 2000
Hotel Room Rubbings are rubbings on hotel stationery, of the room numbers of hotel rooms I have occupied since early 2000 (currently more than 250 unique rubbings).
Some individual Hotel Room Rubbings reflect the unique character of the hotel and its locale several are tokens of major trips. No location address is indicated on the stationery of some franchise hotels, leaving many Hotel Room Rubbings as nonspecific as the rooms they represent. The use of each hotel’s stationery makes them simultaneously characteristic of, and as nondescript as the rooms and circumstances they signify.
As documents of particular events, the Hotel Room Rubbings form an ambiguous autobiography. While they serve as factual evidence of having been present at a precise spot (in front of a certain room’s door within a named hotel), nothing is revealed about when each rubbing was made, who (if anyone else) went along, the purpose of the trip, nor the duration of time stayed in each hotel. Despite their apparent specificity, the Hotel Room Rubbings speak of the impersonality of a modern journey by failing to communicate any hint of what happened on the trips, nor in the hotel rooms.
