Collage Culture
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Why has the 21st century become an era of collage, in which creative works are made by combining elements from the former century? Why have musicians, writers and designers fallen in love with the past, busying themselves with borrowing instead of creating their art from scratch? Collage Culture Written by Aaron Rose and Mandy Kahn In an essay called “The Death of Subculture,” Aaron Rose (director of Beautiful Losers and co-curator of MoCA’s record-smashing exhibit Art in the Streets) makes an impassioned call to arms, urging the next generation of artists to end the collage era by adopting a philosophy of creative innovation. And in her essay “Living in the Mess,” Mandy Kahn (columnist, Foam magazine) considers whether the collage of references that surrounds us might negatively affect the way we feel. Sandwiched between the two essays, Roettinger presents 16 pages of original work he made—in collaboration with artist / programmer Chandler McWilliams—by translating 25 compositional rules into a computer application that generates collages. A companion recording combines audio excerpts from the book’s text with an original musical score by No Age. |
