Hallo blog. We have been strangers for six eventful months.As I rest beneath the Tum Tum tree I am surrounded by a wunderkammer of objects from the maelstrom; a veritable cabinet of curiosities which I am gradually curating in line with Spectrum standards (of course! Nothing less!).
The objects are being submitted to a documentation process, and variously being disposed of, wrapped in acid free tissue and stored, or displayed alongside the other objects gathered along the way of life.
Having a good disposal policy is a plan, and is the museum equivalent of Room 101. Every home should have one, and into it (along with people who disconnect from the world by wearing headphones in the street) should go the silly things we do. Moments of anger, unthinking remarks, missed opportunities among them. But should they be thrown away? I think they probably should. The alternative is putting them into temperature controlled storage with a carefully logged ID number, and then tending them, as one should with all good museum stores.
But are these wrong moments/objects important? Will they ever be displayed again? Do they deserve nurture? Well, they are important in the sense that you can learn from them, but as to whether they should be revisited...? They will always exist in the form of being part of the documentation paper trail - logged, chewed over, and disposed of, but with the exception of the truly monstrous (Mladic), we should allow them to go.
At the moment I am creating work for the disposals team at the Tum Tum Museum. I have a collection of dodgy objects, and like all museum objects, they are nothing in themselves but only exist in the perception of ourselves and others.
A chunk of yellow metal is nothing more than that until you know it is gold; only a shapeless lump until you can relate the carving to your own knowledge and experience; only a disconnected object until you know the story. All museum objects are just the tips of pyramids; the triggers which prompt questions and cascading stories. Behind every object is a wide base of compressed people, lives, religion, experience, struggle (often struggle), and yearning for beauty which makes people add their design to the most functional of objects. The pyramid narrows to the point at the top, on which sits this object. In this way museums house the story of the world.
The objects currently going through disposal at the Tum Tum Museum have sharp edges and therefore present a health and safety risk for further display, and certainly should not be transferred to the handling collection.
My poor colleagues, my poor friends. I am wearing a coat with razor blades for buttons; my scarf is knitted from barbed wire; my hat is crowned with a spike. Very fetish, some would say; not out of place on the Barnerstrasse in Hamburg, but not great here.
My lethal costume, which I am so liberally swinging about, represents the top of my pyramid. Its base is very wide, and the compressed story leading up to its tip is quite simply far, far too busy.
I am sorry everyone. Please accept my apology (and the next ones I am forced to offer). If it is any consolation, the scary costume is being assessed daily by the disposals committee and God willing, and with a fair wind, will in time be nothing more than an entry in the data log.
To be learnt from, but not kept.
