A Heap of Broken Images (original) (raw)

A Collective Collage Poem Research Falling Out of Colorful Pages Onto Paper: Collage Inquiry

Qualitative Inquiry, 2019

As part of an advanced doctoral course on representing qualitative research, the authors used collage to represent either who they were as researcher or the research they were conducting. The authors, comprised of the course professor and seven doctoral students, read about collage as inquiry and research representation and then participated reflexively in a course lecture on the background of collage, a collage creation activity, a gallery walk, written and oral reflection on each other's collages, a research poster presentation at a campus research event, and a final reflection of the entire process. As the process unfolded the authors represented the experience in the form of a collective collage poem, and a methodological and pedagogical article. Elements of this article include a review of collage as an art and research inquiry form, an overview of the pedagogical experiences, and the authors' experiences shared in the form of brief vignettes and collage images.

Pieced together: Collage as an artist's method for interdisciplinary research

2005

As a visual artist undertaking doctoral studies in education, the author required a research method that integrated her studio practice into her research process, giving equal weight to the visual and the linguistic. Her process of finding such a method is outlined in this article, which touches on arts-based research and practice-led research, and her ultimate approach of choice, collage. Collage, a versatile art form that accommodates multiple texts and visuals in a single work, has been proposed as a model for a "borderlands epistemology": one that values multiple distinctive understandings and that deliberately incorporates nondominant modes of knowing, such as visual arts. As such, collage is par- ticularly suited to a feminist, postmodern, postcolonial inquiry. This article offers a preliminary theoriz- ing of collage as a method and is illustrated with images from the author's research/visual practice.

Conflict and Contradiction: The Politics of Collage

2007

This thesis deals with notions of collage conceptually. To avoid an all inclusive definition of collage, certain boundaries must be defined. The hybrid must be considered collage conceptually, as it reveals its sources within its even composition. On the other hand an integrated object reveals no trace of its disparate origins. Although collage’s roots lie in the vernacular, the history of fine art collage begins the early twentieth century. It was originally used as a formal device, but it quickly became an important conceptual tool for artists, particularly the Dadaists. The bases for this new medium certainly lay beyond the art sphere. Collage entered the artists’ vocabulary at the time of the First World War and its influence has spread since. The availability of materials and techniques had developed over the previous century and a half, but the suddenness of its spread and development detonated at a particular juncture of politics and economy. Leon Trotsky’s Law of Uneven Development helps explain the pitched struggle of advancing capitalist competition that created the conditions for the First World War. It can also explain the advent of self- contradictory modes of visual communication. The key to collage is this contradiction. Through the combination of two or more disparate real-world objects it creates new meaning. This is the Hegelian dialectic made visible. The totality of the objects contains a new meaning comprised of the existence of the two or more disparate objects. The possible meaning depends on the signs that comprise the dialectic of collage. A sign contains a real and implied history and a contemporary construction of meaning which, in combination with additional signs, imbues collage with layers of meaning. This totality of meaning also fundamentally undermines narrative structures. Meaning is conveyed almost instantly with collage, thus arming it with the radical power of the subversion of traditional linear thought and narrative. The political potential of collage also depends on its use of real-world objects as signs. Not only has the presence of found-objects in the art world led to an important rethinking of the role of the artist and challenged the very definition of art, the found-object must be understood as signifier and signified. Today the political significance of collage has been greatly eroded as it is more frequently viewed in television and marketing than in the art sphere. Yet, significant innovations in the medium continue to manifest. Artists like Laila Curtis, Mike Nelson, Thomas Hirschhorn, etc. continue to advance collage. The material conditions that gave way to collage still exist. In fact, its political and economic grounds are in a more pronounced state of contradiction and crisis. If the origins of collage were first seen in vernacular combinations and collections, perhaps the future of collage can be seen in today’s colloquial object and image making.

Beauty from Detritus: Aestheticizing Discards in the Visual Arts

Arts and Design Studies, 2013

Wastes result from human interactions with the environment. Generation of wastes has been on the increase following the global population growth, and subsequent development in technology and its attendant urbanisation. The neglect or mismanagement of wastes constitutes environmental degradation and human health hazards. Thus, various arms of government globally have invested a lot in its management; its proper management generates employment and wealth. Wastes have in the recent times engaged the explorative and creative attention of the visual artists as well as that of the art historians and critics. However, scholars and critics have concerned themselves more with the materials used and forms created than they do with the contextuality of the forms. The research, in addition to finding out how artists creatively manipulate discards to create beauty and wealth, also seeks to probe into the contextuality of the forms created. Textual and visual materials were employed to execute the research. The result indicates that they provide artists with unending supply of materials which they skillfully convert into aesthetics and wealth. Artists find in them veritable alternatives to conventional art materials which they recover and transform into objects of utility as well as aesthetics imbued with. Keywords: Aestheticize, detritus, discards, wastes, art, creativity, contemporary artist