UMLÄUT 2020 - THE PANDEMIC ISSUE
GATHER
Xuan Ly
How We Keep Living
(at the expense of sounding cliché)
It all comes down to the gathering of words passed from one to another. Or does it? Maybe what matters is how we say those words and why. Or it’s the way we gather our breath for those words, which are formed from a bundle of gathered thoughts, unravelling. A collection of which we release into the world when and where we chose. And for who? What lucky group? Small or large. Singular or plural.
It all comes down to the gathering of people we surround ourselves with. What if we can’t choose? Well, we must learn how to be at peace in a gathering of one.
It all comes down to the gathering of knowledge accumulated along the way. Not a competition though, right? Maybe what matters is what we do with what is learned. How we continue to apply ourselves, even from afar.
It all comes down to the gathering of snapshots, or memories that trigger the senses. What happens when nothing is new? Hopefully we’ve lived long enough to be able to dip back into the archives to find what we wish to have. Progress is not always forward movement.
On Another Note:
There’s a satisfaction I’ve found in extracting pieces of a whole to create a different whole. Something completely new; one way out of a million other possibilities to splice together pages of magazines found sitting on the living room table. Maybe it fills the hole of the loss of connections we’ve all felt in these past months. A void left by the absence of gatherings. As I made more and more collages, I developed a technique that works best for me. First, I lay the clippings on a blank page starting at a single corner and work outwards. Then, line the edges of the pictures with glue and secure them in place, leaving an opening for inevitable overlap as I build. Now this may be a stretch, but I’ve realized that’s how we should live our lives: glued to our roots, but open for overlap with others in the world. It’s rarely the case when I place a piece without experimenting in other locations first.
One other thing:
By creating art of any form, we exercise a strange version of control. With collaging in particular, it’s not the type of control geared towards the manifestation of a clear end goal, but one where I can lose myself in repetition. Cut. Place. Rearrange. Glue. Sigh. Step back. Examine. Is the captivation in the ability to control a set of actions or in the comfort of purpose?