{"id":13879,"date":"2023-05-08T13:11:57","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T17:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/content\/?p=13879"},"modified":"2023-05-08T13:11:57","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T17:11:57","slug":"towards-a-phenomenology-of-collage-at-kolaj-fest-new-orleans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/content\/kolaj-fest-new-orleans\/towards-a-phenomenology-of-collage-at-kolaj-fest-new-orleans\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards a Phenomenology of Collage at Kolaj Fest New Orleans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
collages by Ron Buffington (left) and Ashley Pryor Geiger (right)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

SYMPOSIUM AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towards a Phenomenology of Collage: Thinking about the Medium<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

with Ron Buffington and Ashley Pryor Geiger<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

LEARN MORE<\/a> | REGISTER FOR KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 7-11 June 2023. Visit the\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register\u00a0to\u00a0attend.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Collage has become the ubiquitous creative principle for artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets, academics, etc., transcending its status as a medium,” write Ron Buffington and Ashley Pryor Geiger. “We wish to demystify the tenets of critical theory, and in so doing to share the powerful creative strategies that ensue and that nourish our own practices. While it may be true that the visual and textual are different orders of thought, we aspire towards a harmonious relationship between incommensurable ways of giving form to ideas. In our experience this is inherently beneficent.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite its increasing legitimacy and recognition as a fine art, collage remains under-theorized. This may not be a bad thing for many, even a welcomed relief, but we think it is a missed opportunity to elevate the status of collage. We believe that a careful exploration and exposition of collage ideas and practices would benefit anyone interested in the play and pathos of materials, the construction of estranged and chimerical images, and practical strategies for the production of imponderable ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his landmark essay, \u201cThe Object of Post-Criticism\u201d (1983), Gregory Ulmer made an important first step toward developing an ontology of collage, that is, a description of the nature and being of collage. On this panel, Buffington and Pryor Geiger will introduce Ulmer’s ideas and present their own artwork as a way to start a discussion about phenomenology as a corrective to the ontology of collage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buffington and Pryor Geiger write: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we find Ulmer\u2019s work illuminating on many fronts, it is unapologetically indebted to post-structuralist philosophy in its conception and articulation. Not surprisingly, Ulmer\u2019s work can be off-putting to many readers who might otherwise be interested in the inner workings of collage. As artists who are conversant with post-structuralist philosophy, we are well-positioned to both translate Ulmer\u2019s contributions to a general audience, as well as to expand upon and even challenge some aspects of his work. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ulmer defines collage in terms borrowed from the 20th century Belgian collective Group Mu: \u201cTo lift a certain number of elements from works, objects, preexisting messages, and to integrate them in a new creation in order to produce an original totality manifesting ruptures of diverse sorts\u201d (95). This prospect of \u201cmanifesting ruptures\u201d is central to the ontology of collage we advocate. For us collage is an operation, one that does not simply tolerate rupture but ensues from it. The fragments of a collage are held together and apart at once. Group Mu describes this phenomenon thusly: \u201cEach cited element breaks the continuity or the linearity of the discourse consists of never entirely suppressing the alterity of these elements\u201d (99).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the theories around which Ulmer’s text pivots\u2014concepts such as trace, rupture, graft, and parasitism\u2014have roots in post-structuralism, we believe they can be rehabilitated. We intend to augment Ulmer\u2019s proto-ontology with descriptive phenomenology, drawing on our own collage practices to inquire into the following: What is the phenomenology of the trace, and does it suggest a particular form of \u201cappearance\u201d? How might the concept of “graft”\u2014which Jacques Derrida described as the \u201csustained, discrete violence of an incision\u2026through which two texts are transformed, deform each other, contaminate each other\u2019s content, tend at times to reject each other, or pass elliptically one into the other”\u2014enrich our understanding of “gluing” (the physical and metaphorical “attachment” of collage fragments)? What makes makes the “rupture” generative rather than destructive? How do post-structuralist models of parasitism suggest novel approaches to combination?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 7-11 June 2023. Visit the\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register\u00a0to\u00a0attend.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ABOUT THE PANELISTS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
More Pure the Stream (A Mutable Cloud)<\/em> by Ron Buffington
digital collage; 2022. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ron Buffington<\/strong> teaches Painting and Drawing at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, where he served as head of the department for six years. He holds an MFA from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. Buffington\u2019s work has been featured in numerous curated exhibitions, including at Watkins College of Art and the Cheekwood Museum in Nashville, Tennessee; the Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee; Muse in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Gray Contemporary in Houston, Texas. He has also participated in residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta; Mudhouse in Agios Ioannis, Crete; S\u00cdM (Reykjavik) and Fj\u00fak (Husavik) in Iceland; the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson; Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York; and MERZ in Sanquhar, Scotland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Mister Wraner<\/em> by Ashley Pryor Geiger
15″x15″; digital collage; 2020. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Pryor Geiger<\/strong>\u00a0is a photographer and digital artist specializing in collage. She resides on a small homestead farm in rural northwest Ohio. Her recent work is dedicated to capturing and preserving the largely forgotten rural landscapes of Fulton County, Ohio. Her work has been widely published and exhibited. Most recently her work appeared in \u201cMythical Landscape: Secrets of the Vale\u201d, which was shown at MERZ Gallery as part of the 2022 Festival of Folklore in Sanquhar, Scotland before traveling to the Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee. Ashley holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is an Associate Professor of the Humanities at the University of Toledo.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SYMPOSIUM AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS 2023 Towards a Phenomenology of Collage: Thinking about the Medium with Ron Buffington and Ashley Pryor Geiger LEARN MORE | REGISTER FOR KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/BuffingtonPryor-web.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QTD7-3BR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13870,"url":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/content\/kolaj-fest-new-orleans\/collaging-our-way-through-the-curriculum-at-kolaj-fest-new-orleans\/","url_meta":{"origin":13879,"position":0},"title":"Collaging Our Way Through the Curriculum at Kolaj Fest New Orleans","author":"Christopher Byrne","date":"10 May 2023","format":"gallery","excerpt":"collage by Katie Heft, a student in Barbara Miner's course, \"Concepts of Art Studio\/Theory\". 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