Each day I receive little jewels in my facebook newsfeed: the Textile Blog's amazing photographs of amazing artworks. In between political rants, scandals, and the minutiae of past acquaintances' daily meanderings, these posts trickle in, providing a moment of quiet beauty, awe, and peace. These are grounding moments. These are moments in which I can re-center and remember that the world is a good place. This virtual curation and dissemination of treasures seems to be an art in itself.
Here is their facebook page.
The collection is eclectic, to say the least. From cave paintings to folk costumes to wild textiles to digital art, this blog has EVERYTHING.
These items seem to be extremely disparate and yet they are joined together by this curator/magician and presented to the watchers in a steady stream.
I asked for help in searching for ideas about collecting, and a very learned friend recommended Walter Benjamin's (WB) famous essay about his book collection: Unpacking My Library. Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940) was a German Jewish critic, philosopher, and essayist.
Collection as a tribe:
The joining together of objects creates what may be called a magic circle or tribe. The curator/collector is the orchestrator of the aggregation.
WB: The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them.
Perhaps "acquisition" in its truest sense cannot apply to a virtual collection. Perhaps "documentation" or even "cataloging" would be better here, though even those concepts imply some form of proprietorship...
JH: The collection and display of that collection is of course influenced by my own parameters. Those parameters are to celebrate the creative, the positive and the inspirational. It is not my business to concentrate on the negative of the world, there are far too many dealing with that as it is. If we call ourselves the creative community, then a large part of that creativity has to be positive and life affirming. I tend not deal in criticism, but merely display work and ideas for others to make their own choices and criticism if they choose. I try to make the collection as eclectic as possible, to show the widest spectrum that is human creativity.
JH: The internet is a human creation, a human construct that deals with many of our facets as a species, both positive and negative. I have chosen to emphasise the positive aspects of creativity. That can only ever be a personal choice of a collector and collator. Their journey will be reflected in their collection, which will then reflect out further to the audience.
The very act of aggregating these objects, even though they are all so wildly different from each other, bestows a kind of order on them.
WB: For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?..."The only exact knowledge there is," said Anatole France, "is the knowledge of the date of publication and the format of books." And indeed, if there is a counterpart to the confusion of a library, it is the order of its catalogue." Thus there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order.
JH: The internet, by its nature, is chaos. I suppose in some respects, the job of the collector or collator of imagery, text and ideas, is to coral what they have personally approved of, into an incorporated world that at least makes some sense to them, and hopefully to their audience. I cannot speak for others but I would presume that many of the contemporary tribe of internet collectors and collators are individuals that value order over chaos, at least to some extent. The chaotic within creativity can be expansive, liberating and inspirational. However, by placing it within the confines of the collectors parameters, I suppose in some way it becomes tamed, observational without being dangerous.
JH: We are also aware that so much passes by unobserved. The chaos of the internet, which is also its dynamism, means that much of value can pass us by. Therefore, our collection, our coralling of the contemporary that we feel has value, can only ever be a fraction of the disorder, and therefore our collections will always be flawed, partial, incomplete.
This provides comfort to me as a watcher. I am freed to enjoy the object aesthetically rather than consider its original context. I trust that the curator chose an important object upon which I may gaze.
JH: The audience for the collector is always paramount. It is always a matter of judging what new subject to introduce and what to withdraw or down-scale, by the reaction or lack of your audience. Each image or article that is posted has a moment of hesitation before it is actually shared. That moment of hesitation can stop the image from appearing for a number of reasons. It might be simply that it is not that good creatively, it may appear divisive to certain groups and individuals, or it may be just a gut feeling that it isn't right for the audience. It is always good to push audiences a little, to get them to think perhaps on a slightly different plane. Personally, having an audience that covers most areas of the planet and all ages, it can be difficult to try to judge what will suit all and what will not, so its best to try and search for the core value of each shared piece, something that will be judged as a value by hopefully most viewers.
JH: We are entering an astoundingly different world via the internet. What we do and say is no longer a personal and limited choice. By sharing, we are approaching others, introducing our values and ideals, telling others that 'this I value.'
I'll close with Daniel Pearson:
I have arranged the sculptures in their own universe. They create a society in terms of looking and pointing, ignoring and interacting with each other. The sculptures are no longer solitary. |
The differently coloured walls and roofs, together with the beam frame, and the daylight, animates the sculptures' universe. The shadows and reflections creates different backdrops for the sculptures, creates borders and groupings among them and changes the surface of the individual sculpture. All these parameters change as the day passes. A new hour is a new state for the sculptures in their universe. Each day is a basic repitition, with weather and the length of the day and hieght of the sun adding their coat of flavor.
Normally, Giacometti sculptures are exhibited as icons in a boxed institutional environment. A white room, solitary placed, by a window overlooking some water or other romantic scenery. I wanted to do something else. If for nothing else, then for trying the excellent sculptures in another environment and see if and what unknown qualities would bloom.
MIRI
