The Collector (V)

Trinity College Library, Dublin. From Candida Höfer, Libraries.

I asked her, “Could we kiss for a little bit?” “Excuse me?” she said, although, on the other hand, she didn’t pull her head back. “It’s just that I like you, and I think I can tell that you like me.” She said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Disappointment #4. I asked why not. She said, “Because I’m forty-eight and you’re twelve. “So?” “And I’m married.” “So?” “And I don’t even know you.” [...]

“Here’s my card,” I told her, when the cap was back on the lens, “in case you remember anything about the key or just want to talk.”

OSKAR SCHELL

Inventor, jewelry designer, jewelry fabricator, amateur entomologist, francophile, vegan, origamist, pacifist, percussionist, amateur astronomer, computer consultant, amateur archaeologist, collector of: rare coins, butterflies that died natural deaths, miniature cacti, Beatles memorabilia, semiprecious stones, and other things

E-mail: oskar_schell@hotmail.com
Home phone: private / cell phone: private
Fax machine: I don’t have a fax machine yet

From Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

A laboratory of sorts.

André Breton in his studio, c. 1939.

The past couple of weeks had me split my time between writing at home and working in an office. The latter is part of a very open, friendly and creative institution, a place that does not confirm clichés often associated with an office - such as routine, boredom, bullying, regulations or gossip.

Still, it makes me appreciate days spent in the house writing much more than before. To describe it, I would borrow photographer and filmmaker Perry Ogden’s words, who characterises his idea of an artist’s studio in the following terms:

What is the studio? Where is the studio? Ideas can come at any time, any place - and at the slightest suggestion. For me the studio is where these ideas take shape. A laboratory of sorts. A space in which to research and experiment. To read, to sleep, to love, to listen. To dream. Music. Chaos. Uncertainty. Silence. A place to be alone - and not alone. I’m still looking.

Shouldn’t the world be more like this studio? Shouldn’t offices be more like this studio? Places to research and experiment? To read, to sleep, to love, to listen? To dream?

Music. Chaos. Uncertainty. Silence.

Places to be alone - but for the most part not alone.

Quote from Jens Hoffmann and Christina Kennedy (eds), The Studio (catalogue to an exhibition at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane).

Every Little Thing

Every Little Thing,
shop on Princess Road, Moss Side, Manchester, England.

I couldn’t tell you if Every Little Thing carries every little thing or even a bit of everything for that matter - the shutter remains closed, no one has ever been witnessed venturing inside. There’s a whiff of mystery about it that is rare in this part of the city and that won’t go away…

A Bit of Everything

Obscura Antiquites & Oddities storefront, New York City.

We started by placing in the centre of the window a piece of basalt, fairly big but not too unwieldy, well brushed and laid delicately on a bed of cotton like some every fragile object. On the right and on the left, imitation crystal goblets held white and yellow sea sand and common calcareous sand… A variety of leaves - beech, locust, oak - were pasted on a sheet of black cardboard at the back of the display. Each leaf was identified by its origin, from the soft green of May to the golden yellow of October… One page, dog-eared, numbered 165, from one of the least engaging novels by M. Pierre Benoît, a member of the French Academy, was displayed in a frame under glass…

Hungarian novelist Alexandre Maraï’s idea for a store called A Bit of Everything, published in the French magazine Lu, August 1935.

In the laboratory of doubt.

Carsten Höller, Key to the Laboratory of Doubt, 2006.

Doubt and its semantic cousin, perplexity, which are both equally important to me, are considered unattractive states of mind we’d rather keep under lock and key because we associate them with uneasiness, with a failure of values. But wouldn’t it be more appropriate to claim the opposite - that certainty in the sense of a brazen, untenable assumption is much more pathetic?

Carsten Höller in a conversation with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, quoted in Say It Isn’t So.

Listmania.

I’d certainly have chosen different words than Christopher Foyle did for his Treasury of Unusual Words (beautiful-looking book and fantastic birthday present from M. and J.) - as anyone of us would have. But I’d definitely have included the following too,

for their meaning

to moodle - to pass time in doing nothing, to meander aimlessly

thigmophilic - touch-loving, liking or needing to be touched or to feel the touch of something

blennophobia - an abnormal fear of slime or mucous

colombophile - a pigeon-fancier

for their onomatopoetic quality

susurration - a whispering, rustling or murmuring sound

curmudgeon - a bad-tempered, mean-spirited or miserly person

to murken - to darken, to grow dark, to become overcast; to make dark, to obscure

rambunctious - exuberant, boisterous, difficult to control

and for its straightforwardness

to unnun - to expel a nun from the religious order to which she belongs.

Surrealist end-of-year questions.

It’s the season for end-of-year reviews. Government summits were held, agreements reached. Germany fell in love with a polar bear cub, the inflation increased, William and Kate broke up and got back together. Nobel Prizes were awarded and the flooded basements have dried up.

I’m never quite certain what all of this has to do with us. But I sincerely hope you can look back to a year full of pleasant surprises, mind-boggling coincidences and fascinating encounters.

• How do you evaluate inspiration, behaviour and progression?
• What is a fire that smoulders?
• What is the number 27?
• Is there a way of building in trails of the unexpected?
• What has been the most important encounter of your life?
• How will your session take into account the widest range of participants?
• What is a path through the imagination?
• Are you a fox or a hedgehog?
• What hope do you put in love?

“Papillons” with questions, some of which were originally asked by the Surrealists who gave out a bunch of business cards with philosophical quotes and thought-provoking, slightly disturbing questions at the opening of their Bureau of Surrealist Research in 1924.

Mark Dion echoes this practice with his Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy at the Manchester Museum since 2005.

Christmassy flower.

Last year around this time I held a rose of jericho in my hand; it felt dead, but strangely elastic. The friendly tour guide at Trausnitz Castle in Bavaria, the partly restored Wittelsbach kunstkammer collection that opened to the public in 2004, had us touch a specimen, no doubt trying to keep the children at bay. I remember thinking, what’s the point? After all she didn’t pour water on it to make it blossom.

But maybe the opportunity to handle the object is the reason why I still remember everything she told us about it: that it is an African desert plant brought to Europe by the Crusaders; that it opens its dead-looking branches and begins to blossom as soon as it is watered; that it was kept in cabinets of curiosities due to its magical, oracular powers (its failure to open symbolised a person’s imminent death); that, according to its Christian symbolism, it was believed to represent the opening of the womb at childbirth, and that it was therefore supposed to blossom only at Christmas.

Proto-Surrealist, handy object.

Glove map of London, 1851, by George Shove. Printed map on leather.

Have you ever jotted down directions on the palm of your hand, for lack of a piece of paper? This glove map of London, created by George Shove to help organise the sprawling grounds for visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1851, would be the more sophisticated version of a hand sketch. The Exposition’s Crystal Palace is near the base of the palm, St. Paul’s Cathedral across two fingers and Kensington Gardens near the wrist.

Currently on display in the exhibition Maps: Finding Our Place in the World at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

I loved that damn museum.

Gemsbok diorama, Akeley Hall of African Mammals,
American Museum of Natural History, NY.

Water Hole diorama, Akeley Hall of African Mammals.

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.

Quoted from J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, chapter 16.

Alaska Brown Bear diorama, Hall of North American Mammals.

Australian diorama (detail: crimson rosellas), Birds of the World Hall.

All pictures from the AMNH website.