Collections

Venue

Allenheads Contemporary Arts - Trading Post

Location

North East England

To the quiet group of 18 individuals seated in a large circle in ACA Allenheads Trading Post, Ben Jeans Houghton remarks in his ineffably warm and jokey manner:

“It’s a little like a meeting of Collectors Anonymous.”

Though it seems like a far fetched concept, the laugh his comment elicits from the group also acknowledges thecutting accuracy of the simile. Whilst none of the group conform to the loaded, often pejorative stereotypes of the hobbyist collector the conversation still frequently threatens to cross over into confessions of the fanatical.Conceding to be a collector admits a certain attachment or ‘desire’ for material objects which is not based in necessity (because these collections are not accumulations of functional ‘use’ objects) but in some otherindefinite, possibly superfluous, appetite or obsession. Whilst the conversation only ever hovered over the manyreasons why we collect, there is often the implication that people accumulate objects to fill some felt (or perceived) lack in themselves ^1..

In Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid – perhaps better remembered in the 1989Disney Film – the little mermaid of the title voraciously collects stories from the unreachable world of mortals above the sea, a world which is full of ideas and experiences beyond her capacity for imagination. In the 1989 animated film Ariel (the mermaid) memorably hoards discarded objects from this alluring, foreign world such as forks, candelabras, cutlery, a case of corkscrews (which she calls “thingimibobs”), glasses and ladies’ vanity mirrors. In both instances, the little mermaid character is collecting these stories or artefacts as metonymic surrogates, in place of her impossible desire for (and lack of) mortal embodiment, experiences, and relationships. In his bookCollecting in Consumer Society Russell Belk extends this idea of collecting as a potentially endless means of completing and elevating ones’ social self:

“…collecting is consumption writ large. It is a perpetual pursuit of inessential luxury goods. It is a continuing quest for self completion in the market place. And it is a sustained faith that happiness lies only an acquisition away…”

Belk, (2001)

In contrast, the collection of “loved and unloved items”^2. being compiled by ACA through donations from the people of Allenheads and the wider High Forest Area – a stuffed owl, an old newspaper cutting, an infants colourful toy, a miniature beach hut complete with miniature wedded couple etc – is not a collection of items whose value is monetary or whose function is in regards to social indicators. But rather this is a collection of objects loaded with the value of personal associations, histories and narratives, “..not explicit or innate but always merely implied” (Houghton). Similarly the personal collections of the 18 participants in the round table discussion are not “luxury” goods (though arguably inessential) but are variously discarded, found, ephemeral and/or broken objects as in Houghton’s collection of rejected slides, Janet Lambert’s fragments of pottery found in mole hills, Chris Sullivan’s ‘Destroyed’ collection of personal items and Edwin Li’s collection of conkers.

These objects are not collected for their monetary value but for their abstract, auratic and aesthetic qualities and for the value and meaning bestowed on them by the particular and idiosyncratic selection process or purpose of the collector (Just as Ariel in The Little Mermaid proclaims a bent silver fork to be “the most wonderful thing you’ve ever seen!”). All of these objects are essentially mute and inert but which, through their myth of origins ^3., their patina, and associations, act as agents for the transmission of meaning, history, memory and nostalgia.

In talking about collections it was inevitable that the conversation would turn to modes of presentation, to examples of other collections (both public and private) and to the issue of taxonomy/ the ways in which collectors select, order and codify their objects. In discussing the evolving form of the collection, Alan Smith remarked that “Museums were there because people were collecting things, rather than because we needed museums…”. It’s barely disputed that Modern museums evolved from the Wunderkammer (wonder chamber) of the Renaissance and later Curiosity Cabinets of seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. While it is generally regarded that Museums, as public displays of historical/ anthropological artefacts and narratives, offer an objective, scientific overview of humanity, the Wunderkammer were similarly regarded as embodying a microcosm of the theatrum mundi through their vast, disparate and mutable accumulations of objects, artefacts and curiosities. The collections of the Wunderkammer were those of wealthy, aristocratic or eccentric individuals, all filtered through the innate tastes and sensibilities of the collector and their context – social, historical, political, geographical etc. – in which the collections were amassed. These Wunderkammer and later the Curiosity Cabinets moved from the private indulgences of individuals and into the public realm either out of necessity – as collections were sold off at the death/bankruptcy of the collectors – or as part of a trend towards collecting as a more scientific endeavour; gathering, categorizing and dividing objects into discrete groups as a basis for typology and understanding^4.. This evolution, from awe-struck “wonder” to scientific “knowledge”, ran in parallel to the branching of the Natural Sciences into the separate disciplines of science (intellectual, finite, evidence based) and art (emotive, subjective, fluid). In this re-ordered hierarchy of information systems science came to supersede Art, in popular opinion, as the purveyor of truths about the universe. “But…” asked Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau as we traversed the issue of the museum collection “…How can you deem what is, and what is not, ‘Science’?” and is it really possible for museums, through their scientific organizing principles and explanations, to embody an accurate overview of universal reality? Some of the group explained how they applied their own strict parameters to operate within when collecting (e.g. Rachel Clewlow’s diaries of journeys, obsessively documenting her minutiae movements or Houghton only gathering things which have been given away or discarded) and described their processes akin to the fieldwork of early science. But equally, everyone in the group acknowledged the impossibility inherent in building a collection which could be objective or unbiased: “We’re always thinking about things in regards to ourselves, that relate to us and what we’re interested in…” (Houghton). However, by the same measure, scientific investigations are carried out by individuals in specific contexts whose choices will ultimately be influenced by a plethora of criteria and background influences (everything from personal interests and skills to economic influences). Could it be – as Paul Feyeraband suggested in Against Method – arguable that scientific discovery and understanding may be enriched by encouraging more subjective, empirical and fluid approaches of Art, the artist and the individual collector to enriching scientific investigation and understanding?

“…Is it not possible that an objective approach that frowns upon personal connections between the entities examined will harm people, turn them into miserable, unfriendly, self-righteous mechanisms without charm or humour? “Is it not possible,” asks Kierkegaard, “that my activity as an objective observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being?” I suspect the answer to many of these questions is affirmative and I believe that a reform of the sciences that makes them more anarchic and more subjective (in Kierkegaard’s sense) is urgently needed.”

Feyeraband (1993)

With the collection of objects at ACA, and the collections of many of the individuals in the group, the approach to ordering the objects offers a critique of the reductive approach of museum displays. Rather than cataloguing, categorizing and explaining items along strict, scientifically/historically governed parameters and existing classification systems, these collections are diverse, dispirate and even contradictory. By offering “…personal connections between the entities…” as in Irene Browns’ collection which encompasses, simultaneously, Disney figurines and reliquiae of Capuchin Crypts, they reposition objects in a way which acknowledges their infinitely transient and mutable meanings. Though the collection at ACA offers a tableau of its locality – through the objects, songs and sounds of the place and the people there – it is without the traditional accompaniment of long museum texts which can overly analyse, explain or hyperbolize the objects of a collection. As such, it invites a subjective enquiry suffused with mystery and wonder, closer to the experience of the Wunderkammer than the overly sanitized modern museum, and offering a window through which to develop new connections, narratives and interpretations of these objects and the collection as a whole entity.

For a few of the collectors in the group, the physical process of ‘collecting’ or seeking objects for their collections was almost as important as the objects themselves.

“…the thing that drives me is the state of praxy that I place myself in. It’s almost like an ever-folding process where it’s constantly happening and it doesn’t have anywhere necessarily to get to…”

Houghton (2009)

Many of the participants described a mental filtering process similar to Houghton’s which happens almost unconsciously in the act of discovering an object, whether accidentally or deliberately, and the revelry experienced in that instant was often described equivalent to a moment of immanence “…the power of the object finding you…” (Alan Smith). Underscored by the accounts of “…arressting, possessing and making our own…” (Iris Priest), these descriptions echo to a more instinctual or primal impulse to hunt*. The notion of collecting as a process connected to hunting and survival is implicit in the title of Houghton’s piece On the Ark and I. In this piece Houghton constructed a large (3m x 5m) glass house on the 3^rd floor of The BALTIC which, over the duration of the exhibition, contained, juxtaposed, and examined an ever-changing display of his entire – inconceivably immense – collection of found objects. On Houghton’s Ark, it was not two of every animal (“two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.”Genesis 7:15 KJV) that would be preserved from the Apocalypse and immemorialized for the future but rather a dissected, examined, and re-presented slice of the collector’s unique time and location. This collection of discarded objects operate on the level of simulacra; every one embodying a different facet of this reality; of cultural phenomena, histories, relationships and memories. A collection this extensive (more than can be seen, taken in or comprehended, much like the ever-growing archive at ACA) hints at the potentially infinite, it embodies a whole universe of systems, connections and contradictions within itself. All of the objects in Houghton’s Ark embody individual lexis which are, in turn, adopted or by the collector to convey meaning through their reappropriation (whether ironically, fetishistically or deliberately) or incorporated by them to extend themselves, their ego or social self, through the act of possessing and re-presenting these artefacts. The collections – much like object petite a 7.,transitional objects and comfort objects – dissolve the boundaries of our social being and enable collectors to adopt languages of things other than themselves, to live beyond themselves. In essence the Ark that Houghton built was an infinitely complex hybrid of experiences and influences encompassing the past (through worn or antique objects), the present (of utilitarian and every day objects) and future (through the endless transformations and potential existences, all the objects could occupy depending upon relocation, grouping and individual interpretation). Similarly to Houghton’s Ark, the collection at ACA has the potential to continue ad infinitum. As data and objects continue to be donated to the collection it will encompass an exponentially diverse array of items, reflective of the multifarious times, perspectives and experiences of the High Forest area. But this collection also has the potential, through the constant re-contextualisation, re-examination and discussion of the objects, to generate new interpretations, stories and future histories for the collection, the area and its people.

*Collections of stones for their use value (flints for making fires, tools and weapons) but also for their aestheticvalue have been discovered dating back as far as the Lower Paleolithic Period (the Early Stone Age, some 200,000 years ago) which may infer that collecting is a genetically ingrained compulsion as much as a learned action.

Iris Aspinall Priest ©

Notes

1. Stewart, Susan, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, (1993), Duke University Press, Durham, USA. p.151/3.

2. Allenheads Contemporary Arts Website, http://www.acart.org.uk/tradingpost.html, (Quote checked 1st May 2011).

3. Baudrillard, Jean, The System of Objects, (2005), Verso Books, New York and London, p.78.

4. Olalquiaga, Celeste, Object Lesson/ Transitional Object, (2005) article, published in Cabinet magazine, Winter 2005/06.

References

Belk, Russell Collecting in Consumer Society(Collecting Cultures), (2001), Routledge, London. p.1.

The Little Mermaid, (1989), motion picture, Disney, distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, USA.

Feyeraband , Paul, Against Method, (1993), Verso, 3^rd Edition, London and New York, p.53

Houghton, Ben Jeans, A Duck for Mr Darwin: Video Podcast, (2003), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK.