Caught or Saved by Things

Week 10

[collecting and collections]

The supreme pioneer is the totalizing collector, the ‘completist’ like Noah. Such a collector can brook no constraint…to possess a complete category in each and every of its variations. …to exercise control over existence itself…(3)

[Other motivations include] desires for suppression and ownership, fears of death and oblivion, hopes of commemoration and eternity. (5)

Excerpts from The Cultures of Collecting, eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, Harvard University Press, 1994

Wunderkammercuriosity cabinet, proto-museum

Wunderkammer of Ferrante Imperato, Naples 1599

Rosamond Purcell, Recreation of 17th-century Danish wunderkammer, 1992

Ornithology storageSmithsonian Institution

Brooklyn Museum collectionsstorage

Museum of Jurassic Technology

Inhaling the breath of a duck, according to the exhibit, was once used to cure children of thrush and other disorders of the mouth and throat.

Song Dong, Waste Not, \Museum of Modern Art, 2009

[fetishes]Anxiety-relieving objects that are collected to bridge the distance between subject (collector) and object (collected) to cope with the sense of being cut off from the world.

(Elsner and Cardinal, 104)

Mumuye, Fetish, Nigeria

Paraphilia, 2008-09Stefano Mirti, Milan

Fernando and Humbert CampanaPanda Chair, 2006

[the salvaged and the souvenir]

Salvage has to do with reclamation, restoration, accumulation and exchange.

Souvenirs confer authenticity to the past and serve as the primary function of remembering.

(Elsner and Cardinal, 244)

Reclaimed Rubbish(left) Courtney Smith, Bonito, 2002

(right) Campana Brothers, Sushi Chair, 2002

Salvaging / ScavengingSalvation, Boym Partners,

2000-2002

Sistema Biobolsa for production of bio gas from manure and slaughterhouse waste Alex Eaton (http://sistemabiobolsa.com/home/)

Guidelines for your novel papers

• Do not use 1st person; say “the novel suggests” or “the reader can see” or “one can infer that.”

• Use “because” as a way of letting the reader know why you think something is worth investigating.

Do not• use the Internet or other resources to learn about your

novel, except those listed under resources or approved by instructor in advance.

• use slang: "you guys”

• ask rhetorical questions: "Why does the author go into such detail?”

• (A rhetorical question is a question that goes unanswered.)

DO

• Use spell check and grammar check.

• Introduce and explain quotes, for example:

When Calvino writes, "This is a city is of signs," he means that the residents rely on images more than their senses.

• DO NOT drop in quotes without telling the reader who is speaking.

• Use the present tense when describing an event in the novel.

Examples: When Jimmy Cross gives the order to pack up, Henry runs.

•Calvino writes about cities.

Stay within the novel.Don’t speculate on directions the author hasn’t taken with

his/her story.• Inappropriate: When Calvino writes, "This is a city is of

signs," he means that the residents rely on images more than their senses. Times Square is like this. The lights dominate the buildings. People should pay more attention to architecture.

• Appropriate: When Calvino writes, "This is a city is of

signs," he means that the residents rely on images more than their senses. They map their days in the city by reading words and images on buildings. They pay little attention to the physical, three-dimensional state of their buildings. This is the city as stage set; it has no depth.

Paper Outline• I. Introduction: One or two sentences, i.e., in a novel about X, the

author uses xxx to make the point that……• II. Idea• A. Object• B. Object• C. Object• III. Idea• A. Object• B. Object• C. Object• IV. Idea• A. Object• B. Object• V. Conclusion: Together these things …..