Prior to enrolling in Sculpture class I had a plan for a personal installation. The idea came to me when I began to clean out my room. Last term I felt very weighed down by my excess junk. There are so many things that I have been holding on to for years that I do not need. I would feel too bad to just throw these things away. Because it was something that irked to a point I couldn't stand last term I thought of the idea of making it into an installation. My first thought was to collect all the junk from my home in Pittsburgh and my home here in Winston and tack it up on some sort of structure and stick it downtown somewhere. The idea behind the project "Unhoard Yourself". This to me could mean anything; getting rid of excess junk, letting a relationship go, a grudge, forgiving someone. Something you needed to get off your chest and out of your mind.
For the class installation I would like to use the same materials and incorporate the same idea into the larger installation. My goal is to build the structure in three different places and take photos of each. The structure and setting of each photo would portray the fact that these things you hold onto follow you everywhere. They will fester on your brain until you face them. The first photo would be set up in my bedroom. I have two ideas for this setting. One of me sleeping in bed with the structure menacingly towering over me while I sleep. The other idea: attaching all the pieces to one wall in my room scattered about in a whirlwind like manor. Below the whirlwind will be a brain either painted, drawn, or sculpted itself. As if all these things were weighing on the brain.
These photos are something I must accomplish before the class installation to avoid losing or ruining pieces or losing interest in the idea all together.
You need to read Sergei DOvlatov's The Suitcase, a short novella that actually a series of related short stories, each one inspired by the objects found in a suitcase Dovlatov took with him when he emigrated from Soviet Russia years ago. What's interesting is that each item is as foreign and useless to his life in the US as it was symbolic of his life in the USSR. Of course that's not hoarding.
ReplyDeleteYou do know about these guys, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers E.L. Doctorow wrote a novel inspired by them I tried to read, but I'm at a point in my life when I once again give up on poorly written fiction.
Still, they're fascinating.