Monthly Statement:
May 2006
Starting where we left off in April, we brought the entrance area and table to a nearly completely clean state. We also cleaned the area thoroughly, which made a considerable visual difference in the space. At the end of the day, as we talked about the days work, my collaborator said that this time the space was so clean that she won’t allow herself to fill up that area again. Hopefully this clean area will spread to include more of the apartment. We have three months left.

The second time we met in May, the entrance and dining table area remained clear. We continued to extend the clean area, further into the room, sorting through papers stacked in file boxes. Most of the papers were recycled, a small percentage were filed away. We uncovered a computer table she brought in from the trash (other people’s trash.) It was in good condition, so at least for now we set up her printer on it. I did have to tell her though, that collecting and bringing things that other people consider trash into her space was holding us back in the effort to de-accumulate.

At times I wonder if this project is beginning to have adverse affects on me. Could excessive accumulation be contagious? I’ve been reading “Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers” and thinking a lot about the garbage that I personally and we as a society produce. There has got to be a balance. While it’s important to be conscious about the garbage we produce, it doesn’t make sense to stockpile things just so they don’t go to the dump. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to be more conscious of what I buy and bring home. I advised my collaborator that she should NOT read this book.

As an object for this month, she gave me a collection of card perfume samples from magazines. She said they could be put into clothes draws to make them smell nice, instead she arranged the same types of perfume into groups and put all these assorted smells together in one plastic bag..

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.