What was the role of technology in your artistic practice prior to Everything I Own?
I’m always inspired by the tools I grew up making art with. Creating in 90s art software, using code to customize my neopets page, making posters with Microsoft Word Art. Putting leaves and string in the copier and scanning in my art to then play around with in MS paint. I used to record movies on a camcorder, and run the tape into the computer. I’d do titles and special effects in powerpoint and film my computer screen. 20 years later, I find it so cool to combine all these old technologies with brand new tech and incorporate physical mediums.
How did the concept for Everything I Own originate? What was the first step in creating it once the idea solidified?
I knew I wanted to try my hand at creating something in this new space for art and release an NFT collection. At the same time, I didn’t want to re-release art I had made in the past, but instead make something that made use of being an NFT—something that wouldn’t work the same way if it was in a printed book or a physical gallery.
Through conversations with friends where I’d try to explain the concept of NFTs and how you can own art digitally… I had the idea to create this project about ownership: taking every physical thing I own and minting them on the blockchain for others to “own.” Thus splitting the idea of ownership and creating an interesting relationship between the two. From there, I was finding these other interesting ideas to explore like identity and privacy as it concerned almost “exposing” myself through my things, and also consumerism and the consumption of physical things: why do I own what I do?
What was your thought process behind the initial presentation of the annotated items with notes and drawings?
Initially my plan was to take these photographs, print them out, and annotate them with notes about the physical object. This felt like I was putting my personal artistic fingerprint on the collection. Combining old tech and analog mediums felt right on par for me as an artist. It also gave me a place to give commentary on each of the objects, adding an almost poetic sentence to each thing. Part of the thinking was also, “now people are buying art… my art. it's a collage now. a simple photograph of Kraft™ Zesty Italian Dressing isn’t art, is it?”
Outside of the practical consideration of having to copy and annotate 1,000 images, why did you ultimately choose to present the items in the ‘product display’ style?
During the photography of the project, I was already conflicted if the annotated version was the way I wanted to go. As the concept came together and I started looking at it as a whole, I realized I would be losing some aspects if I strayed away from the clean photography. The annotated objects felt like they leaned more…”I actually own this. This is stardrop’s thing, and you just get this image,” whereas the clean product photography was a blank slate.
“Stardrop uses these items. Now I have ‘access’ to them too” in a way. I also felt like the product photography strengthened the ideas of “identity” better as well. Instead of relying on these annotations to give context to the objects and my life… all the pieces worked together to create that picture instead. I loved the idea that living my life created this fractionalized collection: over my life, I’ve organically generated these 1,026 things. And I felt adding explanations to these things presented that in a different way. The product photography really emphasized that these are objects… the artifacts of my life right now. I also can’t even begin to tell you how much time this saved me haha.
When the project was released it was accompanied by a note saying “I’d rather you learned about me from my items”. Had the original annotated versions been the final presentation, do you think they project would’ve touched on different themes?
I love that this minimalist style preserves a little bit of mystery.
I THINK IT IS SO INTERESTING THAT PEOPLE COULD ONLY LEARN ABOUT ME THROUGH MY ITEMS.
Providing those explanations and that context through annotations would have eliminated that mystery. Looking at the objects in the project becomes a little bit like a puzzle… so many questions arise. And I think that’s what is fun about it. The project absolutely would have touched on different themes had I gone with the annotated presentation. It wouldn’t be an artist exposing their identity through their ownership and consumption of things… but instead a guided tour of the stuff I have and why.