Currently Reading: Mark Dion – Archaeology (1999) Black Dog Publishing
p.18 On Cabinets of Curiosities, Colin Renfrew outlines a distinction between Natural Curiosities and Artificial Curiosities; naturalia and artificiosa which underlies much museum classification. He also outlines divisions between nature and fine arty and fine art and historical artefact, although notes the growing fashionability for “primitive art” which has found ethnography back in fine art realms.
p.25 On Mark Dion’s artist persona Alex Coles describes Dion as explorer, biochemist, ornithologist, ethnographer.
p.28 Alex Coles referenes Robert Smithson’s notion Sites/Non Sites http://www.robertsmithson.com/essays/provisional.htm in discussing Thames Dig (1999) transferring material from one site to another.
p.31 Coles also references Marcel Broodthaers’ Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles (1968-72) http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/muse/artist_pages/broodthaers_musee.html labelled “this is not a work of art” and Douglas Crimp’s essay on Broodthaers “This is Not a Museum of Art” where he describes Broodthaers as “an archaeologist of the present.” Coles further links this to Walter Benjamin’s discussion on the role of the collector. “The collector, in Benjamin terms, rescues things from commodity circulation.”
Notes: Hal Foster – The Artist as Ethnographer: The Return of the Real (1999) MIT Press http://www.corner-college.com/udb/cpro2ZgGKfArtist_As_Ethnographer.pdf
On Phase 1: Collecting Methodology, fieldwalking is cited: Within archaeological method this usually prelude a more detailed survey or excavation which Dion uses exclusively in Thames Dig. Dion’s team is instructed to use a “scatter-gun” approach; collecting anything of interest (chasing the anomaly) – an approach used by antiquaries and early archaeologists.
To some degree, Museum of Contemporary Rubbish has an affinity with this methodology. Fieldwalking methodology has been applied in some cases (River Holme Collection, Bradford Collection, Cuba Collection, US Coast Collection) as well as “scatter-gun” approach in greater or lesser degrees.
On Phase 2: Organisation in the Field – The Field Centre (the tents on Tate’s south lawn), fieldworkers sorted items into broad categories eg ceramics, glass, bone, leather, shells, organic, plastic, metal. Dion and Field Centre managers then subdivided into different “species” of objects.
The method of categorising a collection is particularly of interest at this point in time as a task I’m undertaking with HOARD. Dion’s aesthetic leaning in his categorisation is highly appropriate to he found artefacts, whereas I have much more knowledge of the provenance of the items in my HOARD collection so am interested in using this knowledge in the categorisation process.
On Phase 3: Consequences, it’s noted that the site temporally linked undifferentiated materials as a collection (rather than chronology linked).
This notion underpins the event-based nature of the Museum of Contemporary Rubbish. The Collections are named by the place or event they were made at.
