A Little to the Left, Collections and Waste Not

The secret pleasure of putting order into chaos. #photography #installation #videogame

Welcome back to Artcade, the drawer from which party streamers, socks, and rattlesnakes come flying out. Someone really should tidy it up, but will we ever have the willpower? Because, let’s be honest: the real secret of order isn’t discipline, it’s desperation. When your phone has vanished and your home looks like a crossover between Apocalypse Now and the world of Wall-E, that’s when the urge kicks in to put everything back where it belongs. Or almost. Enjoy the read!

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Jim Golden’s work might look simple. Photographing objects is nothing special, even when they’re neatly grouped into themed collections. And yet, when I look at his shots I’m mesmerized (even though the most appropriate reaction would probably be to call an exorcist). His photos are real, obsessive, almost moving. Everyday objects, gathered into compositions so orderly they turn into consumerist mandalas: phones, scissors, controllers, bottles… every single thing catalogued with a kind of love that borders on religious ritual.

Looking at the Collections series gives me a physical kind of pleasure, like opening a drawer after twenty years and finding it still perfectly tidy. It’s humankind finally scoring a win, complexity and chaos finally domesticated. I realize this is the control fantasy of a very specific kind of people we’ll affectionately call “the ones who need everything to click into place.” A slightly peculiar group that I belong to, and that I know for a fact is very large. Any of you in there? I’m pretty sure yes.

But some people take it even further. Song Dong, for example. For him, compulsively putting things in order isn’t just an aesthetic choice: in his art it’s become a ritual, a celebration, a tribute. His installation Waste Not is a radical gesture: thousands of objects hoarded by the artist’s mother, all displayed together in a single installation. This is no longer simple collecting; Waste Not is an emotional archive broken down into tiny fragments that, taken one by one, are worthless, but together tell the story of a life.