Monthly Statement:
June 2006
Like a tide, the flow of accumulation in the apartment rises and falls. We work together to empty the space by carrying things out and by the next time I return there is something new in its place. Her neighbors periodically weed through their possessions and leave items someone else may need in the common area. My collaborator always seems to see potential in these objects and brings them into her apartment, thinking she or someone she knows can use it. More often than not these things end up stacked in piles, waiting to be used one day…

I was shocked when I returned in late June to find the apartment filled to the brim again. Once again there were paths through the clutter, just like when we first started de-accumulating in September. In June, my collaborator left the school where she was teaching and unsure of what her next situation would be like, she packed and carried all her supplies back home. Bags, boxes and stacks, of books, Xeroxed worksheets, markers, calculators, rulers, games, etc… now filled up all of the space we had worked on clearing over the past nine-months.

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.