Dissertation [2011]

So..the dissertation is now in and here it is..I have been told that it doesn't make any sense but hey ho..let's go:

A Study in the Act of Collecting
Introduction:

Within this essay, I will attempt to understand the machination of the collector and why as a species, need to collect. I will try to formulate an answer that will prove we as a species feel an affinity with objects and possessions that surround us.

As an artist and a collector, I often delve in this act of collecting and I consider myself an avid collector of Ladybird books. I have a library of these books that at the moment number about 250 in total. I started this collection with Learning with Mother Number Three and eventually got caught up with the continuity of this project. Alas, I am still involved with this endeavour of collecting the Learning with Mother series and still seeking other titles in this series. (Fig 1)

I started this collection because as a child I couldn’t afford the books and they always hold a certain amount of nostalgia. As an adult, I appreciate these little books through an aesthetic state of mind. I adore the graphic design, the art and the typography of the early seventies editions.

As pointed out by Baudrillard in The System of Objects, I am a serial collector. Inasmuch as that I am in the process of collecting specific items and objects in a disjointed fashion. My collection of children books is a collection and not an accumulation in that in is an incomplete series but my ever growing collection of vinyl records are an accumulation as I see no ending in sight and that I am not in search for the final absent object.

Baudrillard’s book mentioned above is such an important addition to this essay and so is the essay that Walter Benjamin wrote on the collection of Fuch. The former book explains the aspects of objects and the systems that are attached to their relative being. I have concentrated on the act of collecting as this has a special and quite important aspect to my creative and intellectual practise.

The subchapter within Part B entitled A Marginal System: Collecting in Baudrillard’s was important in a sense that it attempts to explain the roles that such objects play on society and how they are collected. This has been essential in my reasoning with the selection that I read on Fuch. Benjamin comes to a different conclusion on the role of the collector. Benjamin comes to different conclusions on what he suspects the role of collecting has on society. This standpoint may come from his political leanings.

This fascination with humanity’s propulsion with the need for collecting has interested me for sometime. The art of archiving and the archive has been part of my being for so long that it has entered my creative psyche, as stated previously.

I have another collection that is quite surreal that involves the retrieval of nuts and bolts that have been left by the roadside. I have collected these items quite feverishly for what appears to be years and now have formulated a nom de plume that I have adopted for this venture. This avatar that I have created is called Lucien Fellowes and is completely fictious. He only exists to fulfil a role that needed to be filled where I was allowed to step back and view what was happening, in way disassociate myself from this almost schizophrenic project. (Fig 2 and 3)

This collection has become an accumulation, as I can’t see an ending in sight. As I have dislodged my personality from the actions of collecting, I am not the one who is collecting, I am observing, I am free from the restraints of the collection.

This essay will explain that collections can become an all consuming past time and in turn become an accumulation in such a way that it maybe hard to control. Part two will speak of the phenomena that I have called anthropological collecting.

Anthropological collecting concerns it self with humans collecting other humans in their living form, as body parts and in contemporary social networking. This part of the essay will focus on the objectification of humans and the abstraction of such objects from their original state.

Facebook is an important tool in the actions of the anthropological collector in that society is. He is free to create new identities, as in the character that I have created in Lucien Fellowes, and to collect strangers and then elevate them to positions of acquaintances.

So, hopefully through my investigation into the differences between accumulation and collecting I will begin my to understand my particular affliction. What is the need for my collecting and is it detrimental to my mental wellbeing? Am I really a serial collector who grazes from one subject to another, one kind of object to another object when the pleasure principle is exhausted? These and other question should be answered and eventually the ghost will be given up.

Part One:
Accumulation and the Collection

The fine line between collecting and accumulation is a fine line to tread. There must be a stand off point when a collection is over and a new one can be started again. As stated by Rheims in La Vie Etrange des Objects and cited by Baudrillard, ‘A phenomenon that often goes hand in hand with the passion for collecting is the loss of any sense of the present time’ . This statement may refer to the controlled life cycle that epitomises the continual absorption of the collector. Also, time has stopped for the person involved in such endeavours. Baudrillard also makes a point that a collection must remain a pastime, that to collect ‘abolishes time’ . Therefore the actions of collecting and the collector serves to create a hole in the space and time continuum, a place where one can escape and feel in control.

When a collection has been started the actions of the collector is only valid until the stand off point has been achieved. There must be an eventual ending to this collection. The life cycle that has been projected onto such objects must reach death, and only then has the game of life and death been achieved and a new collection can begin afresh.

To collect and to reject memorabilia is the other aspect that belongs to the cult of collecting. The praxis of creating a collection and the concept of collecting can be describes in several ways.

Walter Benjamin writes that critic Fuch uses his collection of caricatures as a source as cultural history. He describes that Fuch’s collection is an outlet, almost like an avatar to his inner core. This act of collecting mirrors a hidden personality that allows Fuch to lose steam .

In this sense is there a correlation between what is collected and why it is collected. Does this allow others to see the projected self of the collector? In reality, this act of collecting and the showing of said collection allows the outlet for pent up emotions and frees the subconscious of its accumulated fluff. So by offloading inner emotions and clutter, we create peripheral clutter instead.

In his essay on collecting, Benjamin explains historical materialism as the conceiver of historical understanding. He goes on to say that the pulse of the past can still be felt in the present. This means that the act of collecting antique objects or other ephemera creates a disregard for the finality of the past.

So with the practise of collecting and the creation of historical materialism, cultural history is born. Cultural history has a different form from that of intellectual history in that it creates it’s own agendas. Intellectual history has a more concrete basis and is concerned with actuality whereby cultural history is more adaptive.

This adaptive element is advantageous to one who collects. The past can be rewritten and then be given a photoshop styled makeover. The reification of objects from the abstract and useless to the more concrete and functional can be a fulfilling excercise.

Is the materialist able to differentiate between what is classed as the intellectual and the historical and are these two able to survive on the same level of understanding. As an example, Fuch was regarded as an intellectual materialist as alluded by Benjamin. He collected works of art that had a basis in intellectual history. The historical materialist/collector is governed by the abstract, in the tracing of artistic vision and the elementary .

Hazel Jones, lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University is a prime example of the historical materialist. In this respect the historical materialist is a collector of ephemera that has a relationship with the abstract. Value for such items is not the primary focus for this collector. The collection of old rusty boxes, bike lamps and locks are fundamental to this collector. (fig 4 and 5)

She is an artist whose creative practise involves creating what can be considered useless metal objects such as raisin hydrators and pocket fluff collectors. (fig 6) She can be classed as an inventor of useless objects. What is surprising is that her creative practise is encompassed with her past time of collecting metal objects.

Her blog A1 Scrapmetal on the blogspot.com website holds photographic evidence to her collecting endeavours. It is interesting seeing online collections and the objects that they contain. There is an almost chimerical aspect to the unattainability of the objects on the screen. The viewer sees the flatten image as if the object is held within a book and this in itself becomes historical. This sentiment holds sway with a publication entitled Eccentric Contraptions by Maurice Collins. Within this book a collector has gathered together a catalogue of gadgets through the ages in an almost Sears like fashion. (fig 7)

In order to fully understand an object the viewer needs to be in control of whatever is being viewed and this means sensory feelings. To behold an object is an all-important aspect in assessing value both aesthetically and in the sense of monetary provenance. The machinations of the senses such as touch, smell and also auditory experiences are key in this assessment, an old rusty box is just what it appears to be but when it is assimilated into a tangible and worthwhile object it has passed all the requirements that allows this act of elevation to take place.

Jones has an obvious desire to collect such rudimentary items. Such items that are considered trash to some members of the collecting community but this practise of collection are integral to her creative practise. As alluded to earlier, Benjamin passes a comment about Fuch’s collection as an extension of his persona. This persona could well be buried deep within the subconscious but the simple act of collecting or making a collection may help form an outlet, an almost outpouring from the soul.

What is interesting is the state of accumulation versus the state of the collection. Does an object create sufficient influence upon society when it chooses to label what is an accumulation and can we be somewhat flippant in our understanding on such matters? Again this maybe classed as a rhetorical question but it should be approached with some caution.

There is an interesting but slightly odd collection within Manchester Art Gallery. (fig: 8) This collection does not contain fine art paintings or works of sublime beauty, it hasn’t even anything to do with modern art in general. Where this collection differs from the aforementioned variety is in it’s slightly absurd and bathos aspect of accumulated ephemera.

Mary Greg (fig 9) collected pre industrial handmade objects during the late 1880’s and the early 1900’s of which such donated to the Manchester Art Gallery. She was prolific in this venture and would send parcels to the Gallery on quite numerous occasions. These items would range from keys to shoes and clothes to children’s toys. Her activities would sometimes border on the ridiculous but always beguiling .

What separates this collection from Jones’s collection is the accumulation aspect of what is now considered as artefacts. (fig 10) The time of Mary Greg sending these parcels to the people at the Gallery and the time that we live in is very similar in that technology and culture is fast paced. Greg was creating a requiem for the old when she began her conversation with the gallery inasmuch as we have created an industry that focuses on what is classed as vintage today. We hark back to what we think as a more steady and a rose-tinted memory of the past.

This vintage title is applied loosely as it is very broad in genre. Fashion and technology is moving so fast that we create, as did Greg an idealised dream of the past. We are able to supplant history and project our own version of what has transpired with the items that we chose to place around us. Possessions have become malleable in this respect. Cultural history is a fickle practise.

As written within the introduction of The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag in her novel on collecting and romance where she is describing an adventure through a flea market in Manhattan (fig 11):

I’m seeing, I’m checking on what’s in the world. What’s left. What’s discarded. What’s no longer cherished. What had to be sacrificed… But it is all rubbish… But there may be something valuable, there. Not something valuable, exactly. But something I would want. Want to rescue .

This passage all too clearly visualises the act of rummaging and the commodity influence on the collector in a clever and poetic way. She encapsulates the trawl through a flea market such a way that the reader is brought to a rose tinted view of this often nefarious activity. She writes about the virtue of objects that nobody has any use for and the concept of collecting with this short passage.

But as the opening gambit must be addressed here. What is an accumulation and how does it differ from a collection. One answer is that a collection becomes a collection and not an accumulation only by virtue of the incompleteness. There must be that special object that will complete the life cycle for the collector.

Part Two:
Anthropological Collection

Soft Cell Memorabilia
(Marc Almond/David Ball)

Everywhere I go, I take a little piece of you
I collect, I reject, photographs I took of you
The towns that I passed through, I got to have a memory
Or I have never been there,

Key chains and snow storms
Give me a reminder, give me a reminder
I collect, I reject memorabilia
Key chains and snow storms
Give me a reminder.

The above is the opening gambit of a popular song from an eighties chart-topping electronic group, Soft Cell. This particular group focused on the somewhat seedier elements of modern life and this is represented within the lyrics of the above piece of music. Their lyrical output usually involved the use of the kitchen sink drama and the hyper real with a poetic twist. (fig 12)

Memorabilia was an early release form this two-piece group and was quite an ambitious and unsavoury to have come out in the late seventies/early eighties. The context is somewhat ambiguous to say the least and hides a dark psychological undertone that isn’t as prevalent as one would think. The subject matter may advertise an element of stalking behind the facade of memories and trinkets but there are an allusion of anthropological collecting that predates the phenomenon of the social media explosion. The concentration on collecting friends and taking photographs and the almost perpetual state of archiving whatever is happening or what has already happened. Is this constant reassurance and evidence of participation another form of collecting?

The two refrains from this particular popular song contain dual elements that concern itself with the act of collecting and the action of the collector. The latter refrain is what connects the whole dynamic of collecting with what is found in souvenir shops and other establishments where society is propelled into buying their memorabilia. Memorabilia within this aspect then connects to the photographic element of the former refrain with the almost distressed and emotional cry of forgetting.

Memories in this instant then become somewhat metaphysical but extraordinarily fickle and left to their own devices, they become tangled and then eventually fade. As Susan Sontag alludes to in On Photography, as a race the Germans and the Japanese are prolific in their activity of taking photographs. Because their work ethic is so strong, they take photographs as a physical reminder as opposed to the metaphysical sense. They, in the process of taking pictures, allows friends and family see that they have been to places and have the evidence that they have in actual fact, been on holiday .
This particular aspect to the act of anthropological collecting is relevant to the arena of memorabilia and Sontag writes cleverly on how photography has a grasp in both the historical and in the contemporary worlds. In the context of Facebook and other social network media photography is a tool in which one can be collect and in some cases our images can be assimilated and distorted. (fig 13)

In Fowles’s book The Collector of which the opening verse alluded towards, the protagonist becomes involved with a plan to kidnap/collect a girl that he has become obsessed with. He has a past time that is filled with the collection and the mounting of butterflies and these mounted Lepidus are shielded from view. They are for the viewing pleasure of him only .

He becomes embroiled in photography after a win on the pools and begins a somewhat nefarious journey into stalking couples in parks and other public places. These photographs take over from hiss previous preoccupation of butterfly collecting and with having enough money not to have to work, he begins to formulate a plan to collect the victim of the story . (fig14)

What has now become an objectification of a human being? He has projected his desires of collecting onto one element in his life and this becomes all consuming. The act of anthropological collecting has been something of a human misdemeanour through the ages and has been the subject matter for the film industry of late.

The Gary Felder directed film Kiss The Girls from 1997 concerns itself with a serial killer who is dubbed the Casanova Killer. He kidnaps a variety of girls and keeps them captive within a subterranean holding pen. What eventually transpires towards the final scenes of the movie is that there is a greater being that has taken charge of the collection girls and is the fuhrer of the Casanova Killer .

Another genre of film that has become popular is the torture flick. The instigator of which was the first in a series, the James Wan film, Saw. This film is now passed into film folklore and as stated earlier, spanned over four more editions and many, many facsimiles. This film in particular is important for the subject of objectification and collecting.

The basis in this film and its offspring is the collecting of individuals and the incarceration of said characters. The collector in this instance becomes creator and commandant of a series of deadly games that borders upon the psychological element of fear and the fear of death.

Saw is noteworthy in the phenomena of what is have called anthropological collecting as the proprietor of the movie collects individuals and places them within a totemistic box and watches them play. He finds the fact that he can compose and construct mind games and urge others to act his whims fascinating.

The overall justification for his collection isn’t sexual or perverse but is seen as a grand exploration into what he perceives as the downright plague of society. Antipathy, drug abuse and other ails of society is his focus of correcting and in a bitter and unwholesome way.

The film Kiss The Girls has basis in with fact such as the Leonard Lake and Charles Ng case. (fig 15) These people where two sociopaths who by some demonic twist of serendipity became a double act in a series unimaginable and downright pitiless kidnap and eventual murder of families and in particular women.

Their deeds are not really the subject matter for the act of collection but their need to record on V-HS and on tape needs to be addressed. In their twisted acts of power and subjugation, they began to propel the very essence of objectification. They have created a collection, an albeit sociopathic one but a collection nevertheless .

Ed Gein was a farm hand from Plainfield, Wisconsin who was brought up by a domineering mother. She held dominance within her family set up with a rod of iron and she proved to be an almighty influence upon her sons. (fig 16)

When she eventually died and Gein was left with the farm, he became exclusively isolated and as the character in Fowles novels started to fantasy about a singular element in his life and this was the female body. As he was lectured and brutalized by his mother on sex and women in general, he nurtured an offbeat alliance with the only women he could achieve. He started to raid graveyards and rob the freshly dug graves of the recently deceased. When his fascination became all consuming, murder was the only option.

Within his lean to and farmhouse the police found a macabre collection of interior décor that included:
Human skin lightshades
Skull bowls
Human boned mobiles
Viscera on the stove
and other grisly remains .

This man was left with his surreal and ghoulish absorption for so long that he became enthralled with anatomy and his anthology. His collection of human body parts became his only focus in his almost hermit existence and of course, his collection was only brought to a sudden close because of outside influence. Without this outside influence, his extreme source of collecting and collection would have just carried on until another source stopped the process.

What must be pointed here is that this figure has been the inspiration for so many horror films and thrillers that include Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (where I must add that the three characters within the film are based on the one man) and countless imitators.

The act of anthropological collecting may have other elements such as slavery but slavery is more of a business affair. People are bought and then dehumanized with intention of becoming wretched creatures of toil. Obviously, the intention is to work and carry out acts of utter humiliation. Do they become objectified?

The answer is simple, of course they do. The dehumanizing process alters the perception of individual and this demolishes the ego in the slave person. The question that must be asked though is, do they become part of the collection. Is the master a collector and what is the point of the collection. A collection is only valuable to the one who collects.

In the popular animated series The Simpsons, the act of collecting is played out to comic effect. In series eleven the occasional episodes of Tree House Terrors, of which are anthologies within the whole Simpsons oeuvre, the tenth edition concerns itself with The Collector .

The Collector is in actual fact the Comic Book Guy and he kidnaps real or imagined superheroes and seals them away in hermetically sealed bags just like he was collecting toys and other comic book styled paraphernalia. His newest acquisition is Xena, the3 Warrior Princess and the crux of the story is Bart and Lisa, the children of the series become empowered with atomic energy and are able to free Xena and the other captive superheroes. (fig 17)

The comic effect is happened upon when the Collector reaches for a sealed item from his collection and when he acknowledges this fact, he is distraught and then the episode is brought to a close when he is encased within a polymer and becomes the last addition to his collection. This is a twist in irony and with the act of encasement and sudden stoppage of the Collector, puts an end to this materialist game .

In all these case studies the most prevalent emotion that is evident is one of power. The power of owning another may be a strand of activity that is as old as civilization so must it be ingrained within the psyche. Again this is a rhetorical question must be addressed.

As Baudrillard states in The System of Objects , the object is abstracted from its function…what is possessed is always an object. Does the ownership of another render the collectee less concrete and more in line with a toaster or a television? The sequestered person now has been transformed into a product for the viewing pleasure of the collector or in some cases, collectors.

By destabilishling the individual and creating its confinement the value of the object has become a lesser aspect to the collector’s process of disillusionment. Baudrillard adds; ‘(its) attraction lies in its confinement’.

But is the act of collecting humanity and their eventual confinement of such people a valid form of a collection. What function does the victims play in the game of life and death that encapsulates this particular passion. To be a lonely individual does breed a sense of contempt but this feeling doesn’t have to include kidnap.

As stated earlier, Facebook is a modern equivalent of anthropological collecting. Facebook allows the individual to accumulate ‘friends’ and create a social circle that is otherwise impossible to achieve pre-Internet. This era of social networking is quite narcissistic and is open to abuse. (fig 18)

In the documentary series on More4, True Stories an episode was devoted to this dilemma of collecting and social networking. This particular episode called Catfish concentrated on New York photographer, Nev Schulman and his investigation into an online relationship with a child painter from Michigan called Abby.

What transpired through this documentary was that a mother called ‘Angela’ with several severely handicapped children became disillusioned with her life and began to create a new identity through Facebook. She picked Schuman from an article that she read in a newspaper and then like Mary Greg, began to ship boxes of paintings and other objects from her hometown to New York.

There is a syndrome entitled the Paradise Syndrome with isn’t officially recognized by mental health professionals. This syndrome refers to an individual who are disaffected with their lives. It is normally attributed to people of great wealth who feel that that they have achieved too much in their life.

As cited by Dr Yong Wah Goh, “Everyone around them they see as people who will bolster themselves, they don’t like to be around people who make them feel bad.” “The Paradise Syndrome is a consequence of…having a very high expectation about yourself…and not being able to…let your mind relax”.

The obverse side to this is the Catfish documentary where the real persona was finally uncovered as a disaffected individual who needed to ‘bolster her life with new and exciting people’ as cited within the documentary Catfish. This act of deception opened up a set of methodised actions that proved too much for ‘Angela’ to control. Her control over the collection of Facebook friends began to wane quite considerably when her deception became all too consuming.

The act of accumulation and the art of collecting have a fine line that separates them. To accumulate is to collect; to collect is to accumulate. And as the Oxford English Dictionary states:

Collection [noun]

1 [mass noun] the action or process of collecting someone or something
2 a group of things or people:
a group of accumulated things or people

Conclusion

So am I a serial collector or am I just an accumulator? I just don’t know. I do enjoy a good rummage through a jumble sale, flea market or a box of discarded bits and bobs and I also like to collect original abstract fine art. The collection of Ladybird books that I have accumulated has waned quite a bit due to the scarcity of titles that I prefer to concentrate on but my other passion for fine Georgian silver cutlery has yet to begin. This is partly down to the monetary aspects of what is involved in this venture. I have my eye on a pair of grape scissors and that illustrious fruit knife that will start my collection in earnest.

The nuts and bolts side to my collecting is also starting to wane a little but this is partly due (again) to the availability of such items. Whenever I do spot a particular object I do sense the excitement that Fuch must have felt when he spotted a favourable painting. It is all just different horses for courses when taste is involved.

When I was researching and planning this essay a peculiar piece of news became available via the Manchester Evening News. On Friday 4th November 2011 it was reported, under the headline ‘In the cart: Man who stole 54 supermarket trolleys. It transpired that a man from Stockport began to collect shopping trolleys and milk trolleys and these items began to take over his backyard. This gentleman would go to local supermarkets and stock up his van with the trolleys and then speed away.

He claimed that he found these items in the street and would take them home. He then blamed his diabetes and depression on his hoarding of the trolleys but obviously with the aluminium content of the items, they are worth a considerable amount of money. He had over £5000 worth of scrapmetal within his back yard. Whilst passing sentence, Chairman Paul Walsh said that had embarked on a type of unusual hoarding activity. (fig 19)

This story made quite an impression on me and was an influence on the addition of the Paradise Syndrome and what effect mental health can do to an individual. I too had a relative with mental difficulties who managed several odd collections of broken objects and bottle tops. The research that I carried out did lay some ghosts to rest and I now can understand what I thought of odd behaviour before my enlightenment.

As with the anthropological side of collecting, this still remains a mystery but with the advent of social networking, it may prove to be a detrimental state of affairs. There is already a backlash towards this sort of social interaction that might revert back to face to face humanity.