From: "GAZE/FLIP" <sche0018-AT-gold.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: does collage demand that we be limited?
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 94 12:37:42 -0500


ma said:
 These have, not surprisingly, been recurring ideas on this list: that
> collage is in nature close to our actual experience of the world, and
> at the same time constructs a viewing subject with certain limits on
> hir experience -- limits which it attempts to explode.  This suggests
> that collage is, as it were, didactic: it assumes a subject whose
> experience of the world is in some sense "inauthentic", and attempts
> to shock hir into "authenticity" (pardon these terms, I don't mean them 
> in any technical sense, heaven forbid).  It also assumes that the
> aesthetic validity of collage depends on its embeddedness within an
> "inauthentic" prevailing aesthetic that it can pitch itself against.
> Is this true?  Can we discuss it further?

to some degree yes

but not that collage is "like" our actual experience, but that it has the 
quality of being an actual experience, it is not simulacral.

i know that i am interested in form that i feel has the potential to communicate
in a non/pre/post/sub/representation/al/ist/ic/al way. this does presuppose and 
depend upon a standard of representation. seeing as though there will probably 
never be a world free of representation this will be a valid strategy at all 
times (maybe?). however imprecise, the terms of authenticity seem to suffice 
here.

given this it is possible that collage will always be a place to go for a break 
from inauthentic experience, the same way that some people go to the beach to 
watch a sunset. or fucking. or IV drug use.

FLIP