Are images just “stuff to look at”?
So I’m literally up to my elbows in paper when I reach into the bags I’ve stuffed and I can’t help but ask a stupid question: Why?
Why hoard all this Stuff? Sure, insurance statements and pay stubs are important, but why birthday cards? Why notes? Why the images I’ve clipped from newspapers? I’m an on-again, off-again collage artist and a creative recycler convinced that I can reuse everything I touch — remix it, if you will –but when the projects that I save for fail to manifest, I ask again: what am I doing?
I wish I could take these bags and just dump them in the recycling bin…but I’m stuck on another thought: it’s not just paper that I save, it’s images. When something aesthetically strikes a cord, my impulse is to savor then save it. I tell myself it’s because I’m going to find another way to display it, or that it will have some relevance later, but really? I think my behavor’s more like a magpie’s. A desperate, existential-crisis-prone magpie. A sentimental magpie. (Take your pick.)
Is the collection of clippings just a form of hoarding or is it a way of interacting with an image? Can you do anything else with an image besides stare at it? I turn the question to you: What’s the point of “image consumption?” Is it a one-time deal or a long-term relationship? Can I write in vaguer terms and make more generalizations in a paragraph full of questions?
(*Yes.)
Categories: Muse
