The following is a philosophical reflection on the manner in which we collect things, whether it is art, souvenirs, or stories. In doing so, we reveal to the world how we picture ourselves through the lens of an inanimate object.
These thoughts were also reassembled under the auspice of a performance piece, held at Four Walls Gallery in San Diego. The performance was entitled Collecting Dust and Other Things. Finally, this commentary attempts to put into perspective the roles and objectives of the performers who participated, in relationship to what is missing within their artistic community and their needs, along with possible solutions to satisfy them.
We are all collectors to a certain degree. It is perhaps the connotations, prestige, and expectations associated with collecting, say, in the arts, that separates the true collectors from the penny well. You could easily spend your lifetime buying and collecting white tube socks because you like how they look and feel when you wear them, but it is unlikely that you would be considered a collector; a consumer yes, strange maybe, but definitely not a connoisseur.
It seems the difference between buying the same brand of Levis or Gap jeans over and over again—which, arguably, is a form of collecting brand names—and collecting Coco Chanel perfume bottles is the difference between the object desired and its utilitarian function. After all, how many salt-and-pepper shakers can you shake before you return to the first ones you bought, after tiring of cycling through the hundreds of sets you otherwise own? Not many, I would imagine.
This is because, when collecting, there’s a tipping point to having too much of a good thing. Surely, not all collecting is a form of gluttony. One might rightfully protest that plenty of what is sitting in any art or natural history museum is, in part, due to the thoughtful foresight and panache of the individual who collected and then donated it – all the Indiana Jones’ of the world aside.
However, there’s something about collecting for better or worse that preserves and immortalizes a person’s historical and social rank, which in turn, banks on its future. In doing so, it also emphasizes the difference between a private and public practice, which begins in private, as—this is my collection only to be seen by friends and family; and later becomes public, as—here, my gift to the museum.
“I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane.” - Charles Saatchi
If you believe Saatchi’s assertion, then there must be other things which are also collectible that do not give us immortality, but do give us the same feelings of satisfaction and preservation, the same “high” that comes with it, without the expense or loss of space.
I once worked with a young artist from Washington, D.C., Vanessa Kamp, who, like Collecting Dust and Other Things, literally collected such things as dust, cat and pubic hair, and any other sediments that fell to her apartment floor that she then meticulously compacted into little blocks of grey and brown proboscises displayed on shelves in the style of Donald Judd.
Vanessa’s “act,” I believe, is similar to that of collecting, and yet another manner of recording time and place. Isn’t it also a testimony to a certain desire or need, that at the same moment is instantly fulfilled? Collecting can become an accurate portrait of someone’s life—their thoughts, physicality, hopes, tragedies, and vision ad nauseam, willed upon an object of consumption or passion which supposedly contains an inherent quality or meaning—a thing that has no voice, but speaks volumes about its saviour and benefactor.
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