Monthly Statement:
February 2006
The main thing we tackled in February was creating a filing system for important documents and beginning to sort through all the piles and stacks of papers. We started with the dining room table and a side table close by, both magnets for papers. After sorting through the assorted junk mail, bills and other important documents on the tables, we dealt with the papers on the edges of other piles on the floor.

There are multiple photocopies of bills paid, checks written, checks deposited and notes that go along with them. Usually these papers stay in piles of various manila file folders from the time they were copied. These stacks shift or may be moved in order to find something lying underneath but otherwise stay in this form.
I share how I approach record keeping; recording each check I write in the check register, and marking each bill as paid with the date and check number. Keeping a check register updated with each check written eliminates the need for extra paper photocopies. It is also an easier format to refer to if there is a question about a payment (it would be quite difficult to find the photocopy of the check if it was ever needed.)

We set up files, beginning with 2006 in an easily accessible drawer, and two past years in file boxes. Sorting and filing the papers is extremely tedious work but has to be done. We managed to clear some space from two of the major islands of clutter in the living room but there‚s still a lot more to be done.

In going through the papers we came across a box filled with more bags. My collaborator had been looking for this back in October when I collected all of the other bags of bags.

We are now at the half way mark in this project. We have come a long way but there‚s still a lot more work to be done to reach the goal of returning the space to a normally functioning state. Even if/when the apartment is perfectly clean and organized by September 2006, maintaining the space like this will be another challenge.

Process:
My interest in the accumulation project began with a close individual, an obsessive hoarder, who is emerging from a decade long depression. I am the only other person who has been inside of the apartment since she moved in. The apartment is completely filled, waist-high with accumulation. There are stacks and piles of everything imaginable: unread New York Times newspapers dating back to 1997, hundreds of Penny Saver circulars, yogurt lids, and soda bottle caps. Nothing has been thrown away in years.

There are several pathways to navigate through the clutter in her apartment, though you have to move very carefully so as not to start a landslide. One path goes from the front door to the only empty chair; another goes past the refrigerator to the kitchen sink; one path leads through the hallway into the bedroom to the bed; another forks off to the bathroom. Despite all of the clutter, she is in fact a minimalist at heart, only utilizing the bare minimum in the apartment. I believe she is at point in her life when she can finally let go of all of this accumulation and move on.

Throughout the duration of the accumulation project (one year), I will visit this person in her apartment to help clear out all that she has been accumulating for years. I will collect some of the items we would otherwise discard and save them as documents of her accumulation. I will select things that are most striking by the quantity of the objects or by the nature of the objects themselves and their visual appeal.

As we work together to empty out her space, I will document the changing landscape of her apartment through photographs. The process of sifting through the clutter is like an archeological excavation: the various layers of debris correspond with different times in her past. For the two “accumulation project” exhibitions, I will show both the physical documents of the accumulation as well as the photographs of the process of de-accumulation in the apartment. This project is a social sculpture that involves the interaction between the obsessive collector and myself to create a positive change in her life and in her space through emptying the clutter she’s been accumulating for years.

My project explores the extreme case of accumulation in our disposable, consumerist society. I understand the impulse to save, reuse and recycle - however the rate of consumption of objects of planned obsolescence is significantly faster than the rate of reusing or creative ideas for reuse.