No. 91/92: a Parisian Bus Diary

Your telephone is precious. It may be envied. We recommend vigilance when using it in public. -- Paris bus public notice In Autumn 2014 Lauren Elkin began keeping a diary of her bus commutes in the Notes app on her iPhone 5c. Reading the notice, she decided to carry out a public transport vigil, using her phone to take in the world around her in homage to the famous Oulipian Georges Perec. Writing down all the interesting things and people she saw on bus lines 91 and 92, which she took from her apartment in the 5th Arrondissement to her teaching job in the 7th, Lauren's goal was to observe the world through the screen of her phone, rather than using her phone to distract her. During that year, the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred and Lauren had an ectopic pregnancy, requiring emergency surgery. At that point, her diary of dailiness became a study of the everyday and the Event, mediated through early twenty-first century technology, and observed from the height of a bus seat. No. 91/92 is a love letter to Paris and a meditation on how it has changed in the two decades the author has lived there. It's a celebration of community and a time when we could all observe each other in our fleshy up-closeness.