NYC Collection: I’m Not From HereJenny Hawkinson, 2012

Pilgrim. Migrant. Nomad. Transient. Drifter…

A traveler is suspended in an ambiguous space. On the one hand, made painfully aware of his or her anonym-ity and on the other, endowed with the ability to see a place differently. In July 2011 I spent two weeks in New York City for the first time. The trip developed into a residency and I created a significant body of artwork.

In an essay titled, “Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible,” John Berger writes, “The secret [to comprehension] was to get inside whatever I was looking at--a bucket of water, a cow, a city (like Toledo) seen from above, an oak tree, and once inside, to arrange its appearances for the bet-ter. Better did not mean making the things seem more beautiful or more harmonious; nor did it mean making it more typical... it simply meant mak-ing it more itself so that the cow or the city or the bucket of water became more evidently unique. ”

The only way I knew how to ‘get inside’ of New York was to record my observations. I spent a lot of time walking. If one were to trace my steps on a map, the line would be repeatedly scrawled be-tween Long Island City and Manhattan, with a few faint tendrils to the outer parts of Brooklyn and

Queens. In these journeys I gathered “relics,” scraps of debris discarded by site-specific demographics.

This practice of mapping the city consisted of assembling my found fragments and drawings into small collages. Much like Berger, I did not want to make my experience in New York more beautiful. I simply wanted to make it more itself. The Artist as Archaeologist surfaced as I proceeded to read a culture through what remained. These collages took the ephemeral and preserved it through art.

1. Berger, John. “Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible”. The Shape of a Pocket. USA: First Vintage International Edition, 2001. p 9.

French theorist Michel de Certeau writes of walking paths in the city as a coded text. “The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces.”

New York City is intriguing in its diverse layers of social and ethnic strata. In The NYC Collection I sought to portray the interactions and connections between these people. The project became a collaboration between myself and The Other; bridging time and class to bring forth an understanding of coexistence.

One year later, I realized the pieces needed to return to the city streets, so I made plans to revisit New York. I photocopied and enlarged my collages to wheat-paste in Manhattan and Queens; two places I stayed during my trips. Street art seemed like a natural fit—from its anonymous nature, impermanence of form and accessibility. The collages were initially created for myself; as a way to preserve my experience and the found objects of the city. I brought them back as a gift to be similarly found by others.

2. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. USA: University of California, 1984. p 93