schrahafehrtahme

Some days, I know what is what and some days I forget to eat. Last Wednesday I spent 5 hours taking pictures of my bits and bobs, of which here are two. When I was done, I threw the lot in the rubbish bin. That was hard. Then I looked at the 250 shots; some I like, most are what they represent : rubbishes, scraps, junk...des petites merdes...des merdouilles. I felt just so utterly happy while doing those pictures. It seems madness to you, but to me, it makes sense. Tomorrow I will go to the Barbican art gallery The Curve to see Song Dong's Waste Not display of familiar objects. Right now, I am thinking about Sol Lewitt photographs of the entire content of his home that he printed into a book and called Autobiography.

When I take pictures of my bits of junk, I am trying to create a representation of my head and heart combined content; some  visual aiku. It takes me 5 hours to shoot but months and months to collect the right junk. Very few bits make it into the final draw. I am not a horder you see. In fact, I had to accept that I am a bit of a fascist when it comes to rubbish. Even when sorting out beads yesterday, I had to admit to a worrying level of insecurity that translate into rejecting pink and turquoise oval soft plastic Woolworth beads against bright orange round hard plastic ones. did you not know some beads have the right to live and some are just condemned to the bin?

Certain little insignificant things I will keep for a long long time after having done my business with, generally because they are more than 50 years old or they hold some form of emotional value to do with their place of origin, their color, or their shine factor. My oldest piece of found junk is the little rusty metal scrap that I got on a disused rail track with my boyfriend at the time Denis. Denis died in a car crash a couple of years after that and along with some photos, the little piece of rusted metal has become Denis and the memory of walking along the rail track on that very hot Sunday is linked to the memory of the railway I had to cross every day as a child on my way to school and back.

I forgot to go to sleep.