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People moved out of my dorm building and had to throw a bunch of stuff away in order to minimize shipping costs, excess stuff, etc when they went home or wherever they were going; I found a bunch of magazines and random stuff lying around in the designated trash rooms in the building.
I have so many magazines, I dont know what to do with them. I wont have to buy another fashion magazine for the rest of college most likely. However, that takes the fun out of it b/c most of the magazines I found were from recent months. New magazines will come out every month and have new ads and such.
It makes me feel kinda stupid considering my opinion about advertisements and how I despise them yelling at me all the time. I now find myself looking in store windows and at advertisements, but not in the way they want me to. I dont look at the product, I look at the reflections on the product, or the shape of that overexposed area of that person's skin, or something seemingly arbitrary.
It does make me feel guilty. It makes me feel like I'm consuming things around me. I feel like a glutton doing it, which is weird to say because its just information, but I feel like its kinda like McDonald's; its there, but I dont eat it because its bad for me. Advertisements are there, but they're bad for me because they impose this "ideal" image of people that I disagree with. I used to not consume them, but now that I'm using them so often in my work I have no choice.
In my life, I have to create that space for myself to confidently exist without the influence of "the perfect male image" that magazines and tv projects into people's brains. I believe that my collages are the same process done visually. Taking all those scary ideas of self-image and creating a space with them in which I can happily and contently exist.
I've been hesitant to discuss the conceptual aspect of my work on my blog because I like to let it marinate in my brain a little bit before I explain it. But I thought it was about time to bring it up. I enjoy this way of working so much that I think my intuitive reaction to my content is extremely important, especially as my content changes. If I'm going to continue using this process, its important to know my initial response to the content I'm using now so that when I change it, I can have some groundwork in which to understand why I might be using certain imagery in certain ways.
It is definitely still a learning process. Its a self-discovery process that is really exciting to participate in. I tend to lean more on the side that collage is still a sort of subconscious thing. I started with surrealist collage and learned a lot about how I think about certain ideas. For example, I rely on animals as pure things more than people. Now that I know this about myself, I can use it in my practice more purposefully. It is the same with this new imagery I'm using.
I am taking objects and giving them a new purpose. I'm taking objects I dont normally use, perfume, high heels, nice clothing, models, advertisements in general and putting them in a place where I can interact with them comfortably. It's not an escape from the objects, but a coping with the objects that I am forced to live among. A respect for their importance, but refusal of their input. An admittance to their influence, but denial of submission to that influence. I am not a slave to these objects, they exist to serve me, the artist, the human.
I would be really interested to see what would happen if I used medical magazines, outdoors magazines, hunting magazines, etc. Even magazines like technology and gaming magazines, things that I'm interested in. I think in the beginning I'd try to keep my ideas within the realm I've already created for the imagery I'm using now, just to have purpose and meaning already in the work, but I know that the meaning would evolve over time with the imagery. I know for a fact, even though I like technology and gaming, the reason I dont look at sites like kotaku or gizmodo or get magazines for these things is that, even though they're about things I'm interested in they are still advertising to me. They still "pitch" an idea to me through some stupid headline or through editing in the articles and I dont appreciate that. Dont withhold information from me just because you think I wont be interested. Tell me the whole story up front or dont say anything at all. Leaving out details is lying by omission, and it is unappreciated.
All magazines pitch ideas, they all are big advertisements. Even if I were to change my imagery to only using hunting rifles, the idea that they are still objects that are sold and marketed to me while I'm cutting them out of the magazine would linger in my brain more than what the hunting rifle does and why people use them. Which is really too bad. Tools are interesting objects. If this is the case that I cannot escape the marketed object, I may have to create my own images in order to give them the breathing room necessary for their narrative nature to come through as themselves and not sold objects.
No matter what object or person I cut out of any magazine, the fact that it is in a magazine and being pitched to me destroys any trust I might have in the object. I almost never trust anything I see in advertisements. Why should I? Because it's telling me to? Because theres a cute girl in the picture? Well, I know that if I were taking that photograph of that girl, I'd have my client's interests in mind and I'd be telling her what kind of person she is, what objects she'd use, and what kind of music to listen to; not to mention how sexy to look in order to make low-lifes buy the product she's holding. Its not actually her presenting the objects, its some preconceived, prepackaged, processed idea that is not genuine.
I know for a fact that this outlook comes from having a commercial photographer, cinematographer as a father. I wouldnt change it for the world.
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Short Update:
Working on a few new collages. Trying to challenge my image making a little bit, so some of them are total flops. I'll upload them anyway. I'm also starting to see repeating shapes and patterns in how I deal with the space.
School got out, and I've been kinda vegging a little bit in the idea that I dont have much to do until today.
Track I'm bumping:
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