IT’S ALL TOO MUCH AND YET NOT ENOUGH

Namedropping does not mean anything if you do not recognise the reference. It means nothing. Yes, of course, you could look it up if you wanted to. Or be educated by the app that tells you how to look at the works. But I did not. I just looked and hoped I’d get overwhelmed and be in awe. I did read about the works later in the exhibition catalogue.

If I had been curating the exhibition I would have gone with the title. Because then I would not have been expecting to see such a seemingly random selection of ad hoc artefacts, ephemera, and memorabilia. Yet there I was looking at it and I was curious. When I am at someone’s house, I like looking at the books they have in their library collection; I get mortified when I do not see any books. But here I did not get any real sense of overriding obsession or compulsion. It was more of a quirky eclectic selection. The German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin states in his 1969 book , “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories. . . For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order.” I am not motivated by the prestige of first-edition books. I can appreciate them but it’s more about having easy access to their contents that is appealing. It might also be more about nostalgia, memory, and perhaps the fear of forgetting, and that we collect to keep from losing things.