Interviewer: @video.loss
A few months ago a friend sent me an image via Instagram DM. It was a vague combination of numbers and words, a list of search inputs accompanied by a timestamp. Interested by the obscure nature of the image, I subsequently began to explore every post by the Instagram account @collectedsearching. Each post was unique and more confusing than the last; with users abruptly changing their minds in a matter of minutes from “Pictures of fire trucks” to “is my penis good to go inside a girls butt”. Many of these snapshots are simultaneously relatable, hilarious, morbid and bizarre.
Collected Searching is archiving a time where the internet was in its infancy, and the online world was fresh and exciting. Many of these searches feel like diary entries, embarrassingly truthful thoughts and desires in an online world where no-one is looking.
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<CO>
What is the concept behind this project?
<CS>
It started out as a book of poems first and foremost, I was going to do a run of 10 and send them off, I remember reading articles about it when it came out, and excerpts from it, but the curations was very much exclusively about how transgressive it was than what I felt it actually represented. The text is an uncompromised, unabashed, unrelenting look into human being and vulnerability, it’s the search engine as a truth serum, there is nothing held back. After looking at the text again years later, I felt this very much fit with the themes and concepts I was already working with in my art practice; honest text and images, recontextualized. Naturally I wanted to do the same with this.
<CO>
How did you discover these search logs and what inspired you to start archiving this content?
<CS>
I believe it was Jon Hendren who did one of the first articles on it that curated the text for Something Awful, which is where I learned about it. I laughed, forgot about it for a long time, and finally came back to it, realizing what was actually there. Curating these searches into stanzas worked too well. When the pandemic hit, I thought it’d work better within a more democratic platform, that being Instagram. Archiving was not what I had in mind, the work was just as ephemeral as the searches themselves, but after posting a few times I realized that it could definitely work as a snapshot rather than something ghostly.
<CO>
Your instagram has grown exponentially in a short amount of time, why do you think so many people resonate with your content?
<CS>
They do, on a surface level, operate in the same way a meme does; snappy, instant, ephemeral, sometimes shocking, relatable, but it also extends beyond that, because they’re true. What in society today is absolutely true? It engages in a kind of voyeurism that can hardly be found outside of sexuality, the viewer is basically a spy, but one that is consigned to reveal the truth that everyone already lives, and to confirm it, in a way you’re spying on others and yourself. Who isn’t sad? Who hasn’t had a pet die? Who hasn’t been horny? Who hasn’t been curious about hard drugs? It’s good to see yourself reflected in the other, it’s comforting.
<CO>
Do you feel a stronger connection or understanding to others since starting this project?
<CS>
Absolutely. As I stated before, the voyeuristic confirmation we’re all looking for is hard to ignore. Every time I search anything into google now, no matter how benign, I flash back to the logs, and it’s uncanny. I am, after all, just like everyone after all. I want to find big stuff, I want to find out where a bike store is, I want to eat a good recipe, I want to know why my neuroses get the best of me, what is depression? I am the search, and the search is me.
<CO>
Are there any recurring themes you notice in these searches?
<CS>
Sex, drugs, food, depression.
<CO>
What’s the most bizarre search you’ve found?
<CS>
Most are pretty benign and wouldn’t be found outside of our brains already, but there is one that I can’t post because it goes on for almost a week, it could be its own book. I think it was from a schizophrenic person (I believe, I’m not at liberty to diagnose someone now or in the past, but for our purposes I’ll just assume, hypocritical I know, but alas), who stayed up and typed their entire inner monologue for 5 days, for hours at a time. Just everything that came to their mind, it was breathtaking.
<CO>
How do you think the internet has changed the way we interact with art?
<CS>
From an artist perspective, the Internet promised us so many things it didn’t deliver on, in fact it was much more devastating. Post-Internet meant a state of the internet being as present, benign, and essential as water. Expected, needed, absolutely integral to life, for artists it meant constant speed, always approaching work in microseconds, work became exclusively trends, Everyone has slowed down now, and feel a little more concerned about the craters technology has left. If the internet is reflected, it’s about the aesthetics and not at all about theory. Artists used to interact with the internet in a contextual way, one that could be applied to art practice, now it’s more utilitarian, strictly business.
From a consumer perspective, art has never been more accessible, which depending on how you look at it is a blessing or a boon to its existence. On the one hand, we do have the ability to see a constant stream of aesthetics streamed into any device with WiFi 24/7, allowing our minds to expand and dwell upon them endlessly, which I feel has been the prevailing goal of artistic institutions regardless of size, but now we have the ability to do this democratically and without the aid of Bloomberg Philanthropies. On the other, removing the tangibility from art is detrimental to its existence in my opinion. Art is meant to be seen, heard, and felt. A requirement of art is the immediacy of presence, regardless of how temporal the medium is. Collected Searching does attempt to reconcile this by using a meme format, which many could argue circumvents these limitations by working within the rules of social media to create artwork (Instagram as a white cube?), but I still believe art has to transcend beyond these, and there would be a substantial difference seeing the sculpture version of Collected Searching vs. how it is now. I remember seeing a selection of digital work and sculpture at the New Museum in 2019, and it definitely wouldn’t have worked on Twitter, or even a web page at home.
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Collected Searching can be found on Instagram as @collectedsearching, or in podcast form as “Collected Listening”.
