Daily Operation
An Interview with Kenan Juska
by Claudia-Eve Beauchesne
In August 2014, Kenan Juska unveiled a project almost 10 years in the making: a massive installation consisting of over 500 assemblages made of handwritten notes, grocery lists, dope baggies, family photos and other discarded objects that he found on the streets of New York City. The exhibition took place at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, and was accompanied by a thick catalog containing photographs of all 526 pieces. Juska is known for his time-based works documenting his hometown’s constant transformation — he once photographed the wall across the street from his apartment every day for a year — but Daily Operation is his most ambitious project yet.
For Issue 11 of Kolaj Magazine, Claudia Eve Beauchense spoke with Juska about the process of gathering and rearranging the debris of a perpetually-changing city, and about the way in which collage always seems to find its way into his life. Here is an excerpt from the interview:
CLAUDIA EVE BEAUCHESNE: How did this project start? What gave you the initial idea?
KENAN JUSKA: I’ve always collected stuff. Around 2004, I was doing a project for which I was collecting produce box labels. These labels are so strange; the imagery and the fonts are really arbitrary. I collected hundreds of those labels and made a big piece out of them, but while I was doing that, I would notice a lot of other stuff on the street that I had no reason to pick up. What intrigued me the most was the little personal things: photographs, notes, things like that. I didn’t have a reason to pick those up, but it felt like a missed opportunity. I started this project because I wanted a framework in which to use those things.
At first, I thought I could collect things from the street and make a collage every day, but I quickly realized that I would never have time to do that. So I decided to collect things each day, put them in a bag, date it, and then make the collages later. Sometimes, I’d spend the whole day in my studio, making as many collages as I could in one session. The process was this: take a dated bag, dump it out to see what’s in it, and use only those materials to make a collage. The panels were 7 inches by 12 inches — seven days a week, twelve months a year — so I often didn’t use everything I had found in a day.
I had no idea how long I would be doing this for. At first, I thought I might do it for a month, but then I just kept going. It became part of my everyday life. I kept collecting every single day for 30 months.
This article originally appeared in Issue Eleven. To read the entire article and other writing about the world of collage, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj or PURCHASE ISSUE ELEVEN.
Image:
10.18.05 more pills please
by Kenan Juska
collage
2005
Courtesy of the artist and Pioneer Works, Brooklyn