The Making of Collages

A collage juxtaposes images or parts of images that seem to have little association with each other; the collage presents these images in an unexpected and seemingly random way. Profound images, for instance images of human suffering and hurt, become images describing our age. Archetypal images juxtaposed beside each other give a new association, a new idea of the age. The random aspect of the collage is also interesting, this is interesting because any image placed beside any other image gives a third and new image, a new idea or insight coming from the collage. These collages are a kind of Tarot card reading, or divination, of our age, there is the sudden appearance of some insight in the collage.

Collages are similar to Brion Gysin's cut-up technique which works with words and sounds instead of images. I think you could take any issue of TIME magazine, which has excellent photo-journalism, take the images and cut or tear them up at random, and then glue them to a surface in any order that they occur, and you will have a collage that reveals something of the age in which we live. This is what I did with the collages I am putting up here. There is no "thought" in the making of any of these collages. Gradually gluing down the images becomes a system, a process, for instance beginning every collage at the bottom right hand corner, or trying to impose some kind of order or intelligence on the collage as it is being made. When this happens you have to stop and eliminate this thought interference in the making of the collage.

Then, you can also take the collage and ask what does it suggest? What ideas are there in the collage? Archetypal images contain their own energy, their own impetus in driving the unconscious mind. They are an entrance into the collective unconscious and as such they can be very powerful. My suggestion is always to begin with the archetype and then proceed from there; you can try but you can never really defeat the authority of archetypes that are innate in the human psyche.