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collage: debt


"debt"
mixed media collage on hardcover bookboard
october, 2011
gregory a. milinovich

here is a collage i made a few weeks ago, just a simple little peice about chaos and order and consumerism.  "more and more" is one way of phrasing the american dream, and i wanted to just make a visual comparison between "more and more" and chaos. 

i know for me, as i suffer from that great american disease 'affluenza,' i constantly want more and more.  as soon as i get what i want, my affluenza kicks in and tries to convince me that i need something else.  this goes on and on.  it does for all of us.  and so we get phones that can be our phonebooks and our calculators and our cameras and our music players and so forth.  we get more clothes but we also get better ways to store and organize them.  we get computers that can help organize all our documents and work.  we get tv's which will store the shows we want to watch until we're able to watch them.  and, with all of this, one might think that the goal is to make life simpler, easier and more manageable.  indeed, comfort and pleasure seem to be major selling points for products on the market in our culture.  but the reality is, at least for me, life doesn't get any simpler or smoother.  on the contrary, it seems to get more and more complicated.  i need to remember what cord charges what and how to connect each of the 17 different devices to my television.  i need to remember 35 passwords, and the password to the program that remembers my passwords for me.  now, i do a pretty good job at managing this, i think, but the reality is that "more and more" seems to lead not so much to happiness and contentment as to chaos and complexity. 

that's at least true for me.  and that's what this collage is about. 
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Comments

Emoly said…
And just this morning I was thinking of how someone needs to create a little "notebook" of sorts for all those passwords. The organizer in me wants something like an address book, with lettered tabs. That way when I'm looking for my Google password, I just have to look under "G". Instead, my current "filing" system is in dire straits. Post-its stuffed into a clear envelope do not make it easy when searching for a password.

Yes. I just told you where all my passwords are stored. But you have to find the clear envelope. And then what are you going to do? Hack into my Walgreens photo account? Enjoy looking through my photos!!
10:14 AM
monica said…
amen, brother
10:45 AM
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