As a child I use to collect everything I could get my hands
on. Erasers in different shapes
and color, napkins with different motives, stationery (some with smell, some
without) the list was endless. Later on it changed to postcards (new and used),
magazines, cans and once again I could go on forever, did I have to name every
single thing.
Now the postcards have been divided. I only kept the ones that
people actually send to me. The magazines are thrown in the trash and the cans
I must admit are still in my attic. I feel that each one is a find, and could never
get myself to get rid of them.
Nowadays I collect old photographs that I buy at the
fleamarket. I don’t have any relations to them, but manage to attach myself to them
anyway.
I collect the notes from the library books, coins that I
found in the streets and colored glass vases.
The next time I have to move, some of the things that I have
been collecting while living here, will probably go the same way as so many
things before; in the trash.
I spend half of my life collecting and the other half throwing
out what I collected. At one point I always realized, that I either lost
interest or didn’t really need it anymore. Being a creative soul is almost
synonymous with being a collector. You need things to be creative and once you
move on from one skill obsession to another you still keep the leftovers from
the last project.
As long as we are steady in one place and have the room
there is no reason for us not to collect. The problem occurs when we at one
point have to either move, or we run out of space.
When we have to sort out our collectibles, we keep the items
of most importance. They are often linked to memories, feeling and thoughts.
A friend of mine brought stones going back and forth from
the States to Europe. Each stone
represented a place that she had been and something familiar to her. In my mind
the idea of bringing stones in ones luggage, is not only unnecessary but also a
bit stupid considering that it most likely would require paying overweight.
However her simple respond to my slight scorned way of
asking if she really intended to bring stones on the airplane was, that we each
choose what we carry.
Now I would never carry stones, but I do see her point.
Every collection means something to the owner and when we
collect, the items we posses become personal and invaluable to us. Therefore we
find it difficult to detach ourselves from them and once we have started one
collection it is easy to start another one without getting writ of the old and
thereby increase our number of possessions.
There is the professional collector who often collects in
order to (at some point) make a profit, the collection functions almost as a long-term
investment.
In this group I would place things, which are defined as collectibles,
such as art, furniture, stamps, coins, and postcards.
Many of today’s art collectors are opening their collection
to the benefit of the public. Earlier many guarded their collection, and many
of the artworks ended up in the collector’s attic and were never shown to
anyone.
This new tendency gives us the impression that their drive
of collecting does not only come from the idea of ownership, but also an urge
to educate people in what they find good art to be.
There is the hobby collector, who collects things just for
the fun of collecting. What they have in common is the aimless gesture. Sometimes it almost becomes a ritual.
Like when I a couple of times went traveling, and bought an umbrella because
the weather required it. Now every
time I go travel I feel compelled to buy an umbrella, regardless of what the
weather is like. It is a nice souvenir, and is still useful even when I get
back home.
As a result I possess more umbrellas than the average
person. Apart from always being prepared for any kind of weather, they don’t
really serve a purpose. Ironic enough I chose not to bring any of them when I
moved to London, but I couldn’t give them away either.
There also is the habitual collector who is not aware of
their tendency to collect. They see a comic in the newspaper, clip it out and
save it because they think it’s fun, and can maybe be used at a later occasion.
This ritual they repeat ever so often with several things. They don’t collect a specific thing,
but have a collection of many different things and might not be aware of this.
When cleaning out my Grandmothers house some years ago, we
found a drawer full of empty used envelopes. All of them contained little notes
that she wrote down while on the phone.
There was information about what time people would be
arriving, dental appointment etc. I have no Idea why she wanted to hold on to
these envelopes. The information on them could clearly not be used again, but
yet she kept them throughout her life.
Everyone is a collector. If it isn’t postcards, stones,
cameras or stamps it is something else.
In some way all our belongings are things we have collected,
which we choose to move around with us when we go from place to place. Even
things as banal as CD’s, books, shoes and silverware, which are to be found in
almost every household, are collections. When we posses multiple items within
the same category it automatically becomes a collection of something.
But the everyday artifacts are a different kind of
collection than the ones we actively choose to collect.
These is no clear definition of how many items a collection
must consist of before it can be defined as a collection. In the end it depends of what is being
collected and the relationship to those items.
This notion of collecting is really banal. Once we own more
than one of the same object, it no longer serves a practical purpose. In theory
one thing of each should be enough, the first umbrella should protect me just
as good from the rain as the second and third. So when we own more than one of
the same item it becomes excessive.
Why is it that we as humans feel the need to surround
ourselves with useless stuff? Even homeless people collect things, which aren’t
useful to them, and they don’t have a house to stock it in. It is strange that we all have this
compulsion to own things of no importance and yet important to us. Collecting
is somehow extravagant but also a necessity in order to make our lives
interesting. A world without collectors would be boring and colorless, as the
collection is a form of expression of the collector and their personality, just
as the clothes we choose to wear, music that we listen to and things that we
read. But then these are all just types of collections.
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