“letmein” [Password Project]: a collection from the top 1000 most common online passwords (from FB, to LinkdIn, to Gmail). These are the words that keep us safe; the language we use to let people in, or keep them out. Painted on the side of the Nelson Mandela Bridge into the Johannesburg CBD, Sept 2017.

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from https://www.playbraamfontein.co.za/playground/alice-edy/ :

The Password Project was painted below the Nelson Mandela Bridge, on the wall opposite Play’s 62 Juta street in 2017, and  is a collection taken from the top 1000 most common online passwords (from Facebook, to LinkdIn, to Gmail –   ‘letmein’ is the 11th most common online password).

Alice says, “‘Let-me-in’ are the words that keep us safe; the language that we use to protect ourselves, and to keep other people at a distance. The bridge, as a primary artery into central Johannesburg is a site of continual human flow. The project raises questions of access control, asking people to consider how historically, and still today, language has been used as a tool in the regulation of human movement. There is also something semi-mystic about the words that hold this kind of power; a contemporary incarnation of the “Open Sesame” myth.

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