Michael's exhibition 'Total Rubbish' at the Merz Barn

One more project/exhibition/residency for Michael Holland packed away before the big trip to Latvia ( BREXIT tour!). At the beautiful scenery of Ambleside, but rainy, half of a week (22nd to26th February) was spend in making collages and typing messages also croqueting a rag with Rose and Vineta on a particularly rainy Saturday!

 

 

too many things... I have.

Stuff I have.

Weight of things I carry.

I do have a lot of things. A lot of materials I have collected with an idea in mind that I will make something out of it: hundreds of pieces of fabric, buttons, threads, ribbon, needles, paper, paints, and many more little possibly useful bits …. Every thing two of the kind, just in case I will need it… nothing of it is worth much, just to me… I thought I would just sit one day and sew and make for days to produce lots and lots of new things, but then it never quite happen and had accumulated load of stuff which is starting to weigh me down. Like for example books I have collected books I want to read but I have never got time… will I ever read them? Or if I sincerely wanted to read them, wouldn’t I have found time to read them already?

Moving to Latvia is in two month, a bit less because February is a short month. And big clear out of the things I have is yet to come. It is good to be forced to sort out things one have by the necessity of moving place of living.

I have never denied I like things and I like to surround myself with the material things I like. I always have said that I am materialistic is the sense that I appreciate physical things, my own belongings. I always have had my tool kit, my sewing kit, computer and it’s extras, lots of clothes, and I think I have looked after the things I have well, further more I believe that we should look after things we choose to have and make use of then as much as possible, because there is materials costing earth and energy of labour invested in them. But I have never thought it will be quite difficult to part with these things, the stuff I have hordered… I have bought everything for a very cheap price, so the things I have does not hold a material value they are more emotional value… ‘these are just the things I like’ would be the simplest answer if I’d be asked why do I have all that stuff? If I were to sell them all, they would not bring much money, because I am very aware that my things are not as valuable to no one else as they are to me. One might say: ‘that they are just things!’. But for some reason they seam to define me. Or I think maybe if I have kids they might wanna have the things I had, maybe books… But how many of my parents things do I posses? Very little…. As soon as I left my parents home I made a point of getting my own very special things!

Never the less clear out is good! It will make me strip down to those very core object which I need my necessities, like warm clothes, water-proves and underwear; things I want the most: books I will need, like gardening books, books I wish to read the most; and finally to the gadgets with no modern person can live without: computer and for me it’s the sewing machine with all it’s accessories…

But what about all the trinkets which is the hardest to say good by to, theses unpractical objects which seams to be less valuable, but the most at the same time. Because these objects are the ones that only I have and they are the ones, which seam to describe me, wherever they are gifts or curious objects I have found, they all have a story to tell or hold a memory. Do I just get rid of them?  Or do I keep them. It might be just that I fear to face my self, which is just a human being in real time without extended body or brain capacity manifesting itself in form of objects or digital files. Just being without things and only with it’s thoughts.

There is another realisation which getting rid of things has revealed: I have accumulated so many things because I hid behind the notion that I will create my own original things from the things I collect. That is why I called most of the things I have ‘materials’. But is only so much I can make. I am limited by the time and inspiration.  I have to admit to myself that I have failed to do what I planned to; all those projects I had in mind with the things I have gathered had not materialised, and I have to let them got in to the abyss of intended-to-but-not-done. I have to come to terms with the notion that circumstances have changed and I won’t be able to make all those things I wanted to make! Maybe they won’t be needed anyway…

(written by Vineta on the day when I realised how much and at the same time that I have too much stuff)

Every time I move or someone else moves home I remember George carling’s comedy routine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac