Statement by the Artist: Collage may not be enough to end capitalism

January 25, 1997

Statement by the Artist: Collage may not be enough to end capitalism. Here are eight ways how it may help:

• Recycling junkmail defends the environment against the accumulation of garbage.
• Collage, a copyright-infringement-based art form, resists commodification: it is illegal for me to sell my work.
• Slick color advertisements are meant to dazzle and mystify. Transformaing them into ugly art defeats and mocks their intentions.
• Recontextualizing propaganda can help measure the depths of its lies.
• Collage further resists commidification by making no pretense of timelessness: it is assembled from disturbingly contemporary materials and does not age well.
• Collage does not conceal the details of its construction. Seams, torn edges, tape, and rubber-cement stains are visible. Thus it can make producers out of consumers.
• Collage also has no popularly acknowledged canon.
• No collage-artist will ever risk being accused of genius. I am comfortable with the idea that collage isn't even art. So we'll have to find something else to do with it other than admire it, buy it, and hope to meet the artist.

— William Gillespie

Statement Artist: Collage capitalism. ways junkmail environment accumulation garbage. Collage, art form, commodification: work advertisements art intentions propaganda depths lies Collage commodification pretense timelessness materials collage details construction. Seams, edges, tape, rubber-cement stains producers consumers. Collage cannon. Collage-artist genius idea collage art. something William Gillespie

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Published in The Octopus: Champaign-Urbana's Alternative Weekly, January 25, 1997.