I made this collage in the Fall of 2024.
I like to think that it invites the viewer to contemplate several questions.
Will they restore hope?
The most pressing question, if the size of the text in the upper left quadrant and positioning in the foreground can be said to convey emphasis, is “will you restore hope?”
There’s an assumption that hope can, in fact, be restored. There are other assumptions as well. For instance: what does it mean to hope? How can it be restored? Has it been lost?
There’s also a call-out to the so-called Gen Z crew, which I regret now in retrospect.
At the time, I meant it more as an alignment thing, like finding kinship with another person. But now, I chafe at the possibility it might be read as yet another responsibility assigned to members of the so-called Gen Z cohort.
Like gen z needs another monumental responsibility on top of, you know, just living.
Like they need another monumental responsibility on top of, you know, just living. Back to the drawing board.
Version 2
I took out the reference to gen z, played with the colours, and added in a different visual in the uppermost left corner that reminded me of a solarpunk’s vision for a future. It felt important to me to include a reference to technology, beyond the buildings and gardens, so I captured small slices of a general motherboard pic and added them in small overlay snippets.
I don’t love it. The combination of the green at the bottom and the yellow-orange skateboarder grabbed my eyes immediately, at the expense of being able to take the whole collage in.
Le sigh. Well, kind of. Iterating is part of the fun with digital collages–something I can’t really do with paper collages unless I am more organized and have prepared replicas of the ephemera I’m using.
Version 3
Folks, I think I’ve hit the last iteration (for now at least). I’m not just saying that because I need to go to work either…
I flipped the image of the skateboarder so the person is now skating off, away from the view, to the left. Originally, I felt a bit ambivalent about this choice–there must be something that connects the portrayal of a subject moving away from the viewer and towards the left as being symbolic of the past (and vice versa, with moving towards the right as symbolizing the future).
But, you know that whole idea that future = progress and that progress = good? Yeah… it’s rigged (here’s one open access resource if you want to learn more, but I encourage you to conduct your own search using keywords like ‘modernity’ and ‘critiques’ or ‘limitations’).
Anyway, I digress. We have the skater moving away from us, to the left. We have the garden-buildings over in the right corner, with motherboard slices made slightly more prominent. And we have the phrase split up into two sections, “will you” and “restore hope?”
Where there is hope, there is choice. And where there is choice, there is knowledge.
Where there is hope, there is choice. And where there is choice, there is knowledge. What if restoring hope involved restoring choice?
Keep organizing, friends.
x Britt
