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SINÉAD GLEESONtalks to blog artist Philip Thiel about his latest project, 2010: The Year of Kissing People

HOW MANY PEOPLE have you kissed this year? As of today, Philip Thiel has kissed 142. By December 31st, that figure will be 365; a different person for each day of the year. Why? Because of a project he’s engaged in called 2010: A Year of Kissing People. Thiel, who works for Melbourne’s Immigration Museum in Australia, engages in an annual artistic project that involves a daily ritual. “It came from a collective New Year’s Eve resolution. My idea was to write a poem about the year, summarising each day in a couple of lines and at the end of the year, I had a huge poem completed.” Thiel set up a blog as a way of documenting his work, and followed up the poem project with something more public – presenting a flower to a stranger every day. “When I started the flowers project, strangers, and even people from countries I had never visited started reading the blog, and I became addicted to the feedback aspect of it.”