collage as pandemic
tutored by dr. ruth bianco
collage as philosophy
“I think a picture is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world.” — Robert Rauschenberg
Collage can be seen as a way to represent our own realities with the physical fragments and left-overs of society. It is an art form that seeks to understand the world through the different snippets of life; be it a discarded object, a memory or even a piece of ourselves (such as Rauschenberg’s Booster, where he used his own x-ray as a self portrait).
In Rebecca Jones’ essay Appropriation, Collage and the Cultural Condition, she also makes reference to the fragmentation of reality through the overflow of information being absorbed by us from the internet. This experience has created a new kind of mental state that is constantly active and seeking communication and affirmation from social media, and a constant bombardment of the 24-hour new cycle; making us anxious, hyper-active and stressed, and in this particular time it is especially difficult to shut off from this hyper-reality.
I view collage as a means to reconcile with these events, and take the time to understand them through tactility. It has been a journey which helped me make sense of the covid-19 pandemic and understand my own feelings towards it, by using the same imagery which I have been bombarded with, imagery which made me anxious, and transforming it into something else.
I defragmented my own anxieties and reality, almost as a means of therapy.
Collage can be seen as a way to represent our own realities with the physical fragments and left-overs of society. It is an art form that seeks to understand the world through the different snippets of life; be it a discarded object, a memory or even a piece of ourselves (such as Rauschenberg’s Booster, where he used his own x-ray as a self portrait).
In Rebecca Jones’ essay Appropriation, Collage and the Cultural Condition, she also makes reference to the fragmentation of reality through the overflow of information being absorbed by us from the internet. This experience has created a new kind of mental state that is constantly active and seeking communication and affirmation from social media, and a constant bombardment of the 24-hour new cycle; making us anxious, hyper-active and stressed, and in this particular time it is especially difficult to shut off from this hyper-reality.
I view collage as a means to reconcile with these events, and take the time to understand them through tactility. It has been a journey which helped me make sense of the covid-19 pandemic and understand my own feelings towards it, by using the same imagery which I have been bombarded with, imagery which made me anxious, and transforming it into something else.
I defragmented my own anxieties and reality, almost as a means of therapy.
An exploration on the idea of infection,
transmission, crowds and the masses.
transmission, crowds and the masses.
Out of the cut outs from the previous
collage, the ‘infected’ are juxtaposed to an
internet web graphic of how covid-19 is
transmitted from person to person.
A movie taken from the 1928 film ‘The Crowd’, where people are working on desks, but apart, juxtaposed to a gathering crowd.
Linking the two images is a virus-ridden petri-dish; the concept ofsocial distancing.
Religion and faith as being affected by
covid-19. Faith in isolation, versus faith in
groups.
Overlaying images of the virus with an x-ray
of the lungs, and a poem quote about the
pandemic by Simon Armitage.
Inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s Booster.
Inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s Booster.
During a pandemic, love and relationships are affected by the changes. We are all suffocating in each other’s presences .
b.sc year 3, semester 2
collage as philosophy
06–2020