I work with what is there. I dissect and recombine it. Whether that’s with texts, images, material or digital content. In today’s world, there is plenty to choose from.
The technique is age-old. »Patchwork« – a collage with needle and thread, dates back to 1,000 BC. Collages with stones and shards – »mosaics« – are much older. The recombination of texts – »montage« – has been practised since the Middle Ages. Musical collage – »medley«, or later »potpourri« – dates back to the Renaissance. The word collage stems from the french »coller« = to glue. Collages with scissors and glue – also »assemblage« – arrived in the arts in the beginning of the 20th century. Photography had already discovered means of recombination which freed the medium from the material world. Marcel Duchamp is able to reframe extant objects purely by altering their context. I also associate this with collage.
It is only since the end of the 20th century that computer technology has seen the development of a new type of collage – known as »samplings« – which provokes questions that nobody has previously wrestled with. This has made collage techniques more controversial than ever before.