Steve and I present a paper as part of The Great Community - Ruskin in Europe in Ca’Foscari as part of our Never-Land project. This is the room we spoke in - a Never land indeed? Part of our paper is below, but in summary we spoke of Collage and Europe and 200 years from now. We hoped to offer our view in response to the Utopian strand of the conference:
…………Never-Land is our fictional nowhere. Its ambition is to imagine what Europe will look like in 200 years. John Ruskin was born only 4 years after the battle of Waterloo, he took his first trip to Europe in 1833, the year the British abolished slavery. When the young Ruskin stepped onto land in Calais, the horse and the hand were still the driving force behind human industry. In looking backwards 200 years, we wondered what it could have been possible to predict of today. In looking forward - we ask - Will it be a place that acknowledges John Ruskin’s love of beauty and nature? Will it value the hand and personal creativity and the importance of collective action?
Practically we have set up spaces where people can come together to share their visions through talking, debate, reflection and making. We have utilised 100s of found European postcards, inviting people to collage using magazines, imagery, words - to add their vision on top. The only rule was that the vision must be positive. We feel the project has supported people to address what is scary or what has potential, what is urgent, what is not. It has helped us to think about how we all often default to negativity, the importance of seeing and being seen. Neverland is a space of resistance in many ways.
Why 200 years? We felt 200 years put you far enough into the future so you weren’t tied to what was happening now. It also links to Ruskin and his birth. The changes of the last 200 years would suggest you can’t predict a reality. We can only speculate.
Why Collage? Practically Collage allows you quickly to imagine things differently. Using found imagery lets you not be constrained by lack of ‘drawing’ skill. You can put images together quickly - like the rhinos in a city. Ideas are made fast.
Collage Emphasises concept and process over end product, collage brings the incongruous into meaningful congress with the ordinary
Collage also is important in a larger sense, it expands off a surface. We can imagine this conference and some of Ruskin’s works maybe doing this – the layering of ideas and placing things next to one another that aren’t obvious.
To make a collage you have to have imagery coming together, layering and merging – it warps reality in many ways. There is a push and pull. You can play with space, perspective, reality. fantasy. It is propositional. The perfect method to complement/extend the title or them…..