Krantenknipsel uit archief Jan Veth Possibly 1918

This small newspaper clipping from the Jan Veth archive at the Rijksmuseum, produced by Algemeen Handelsblad, looks so fragile. I imagine it's just been torn from a larger page. Looking at this, I imagine the person writing this at the printing press... What were they thinking about as they chose their words? How did they feel when it was printed, put out into the world? A little nervous maybe? It's interesting to think how the simple act of tearing this clipping creates a new form. It's an act of curation and composition, creating a new object with a different feel from the original newspaper. It reminds me that so much of what art is about comes down to decisions, to the conscious and unconscious choices we make. It also speaks to the transient and fragmentary nature of our own time. We are all collages of our own past, and it is in our own way incomplete.