PORTRAYAL MIXED-MEDIA
There is a phrase that gets bandied about whenever a big event, such as 9/11, occurs: “Never Forget.” You can get it on a poster with the Twin Towers in the background and hang it on your wall. But, of course, we do forget. We have to. It’s a survival mechanism. Sure, those of us who were alive when it happened remember, but we don’t think about it every day. We have gone on about our daily lives, basically pretending that all is well in order to survive with some semblance of normalcy.
The modern world has become a challenging place. We endure threats of nuclear war, international terrorism, governmental corruption, corporate greed, rampant consumerism, economic collapse, worldwide epidemics, global warming, and natural disasters. Think about the state of the world every day. Do not continue going about your life. That’s over. The world is over. The reason to exist used to be the notion that life is meaningful. Now, on the contrary, meaningfulness is over. Accept that the world, defined as the totality of meaningful events, has ended. And, yet, we remain. What else is worth thinking about? We may now hold that nothing matters, but it also deeply matters that nothing matters. The world didn’t end in the sense that there are no human beings left. It ended in terms of it’s rationality. If this can occur, and we can’t figure out why, nothing makes sense anymore. The world has ended!
The modern world has become a challenging place. We endure threats of nuclear war, international terrorism, governmental corruption, corporate greed, rampant consumerism, economic collapse, worldwide epidemics, global warming, and natural disasters. Think about the state of the world every day. Do not continue going about your life. That’s over. The world is over. The reason to exist used to be the notion that life is meaningful. Now, on the contrary, meaningfulness is over. Accept that the world, defined as the totality of meaningful events, has ended. And, yet, we remain. What else is worth thinking about? We may now hold that nothing matters, but it also deeply matters that nothing matters. The world didn’t end in the sense that there are no human beings left. It ended in terms of it’s rationality. If this can occur, and we can’t figure out why, nothing makes sense anymore. The world has ended!
ARCHIVES
Historically, collage tends to re-emerge in times of trauma and social change. Ideally suited to capture the speed, time, and pace of the modern urban experience, collage records our civilization, capturing the topical, the transitory, the absurd, the humane and the inhumane. Collage can use disparate images to communicate the unease, displacement, and anger peculiar to our times and often depicts our age of crumbling symbols and broken icons. Collage reflects the contemporary world full of excessive imagery and the cultural market of today as a global flea market; the Dollar Store, eBay, the dumpster, and the next Google image search.