Museum of I Love You So Much
Dec 10th - Feb 3rd, 2024
Curated by
Hannah Tishkoff
Isabelle Adams
Sammie Anselmo
Chip Barrett
Maya Buffett-Davis
Reid Calvert
Alex Freundlich
Kati Kirsch
Madeline Olson
Forever Soo Hoo
Leti Soriano
Press Release
By Hannah Tishkoff
The Museum of I Love You So Much is a place.
We know it exists, we’ve been there. We collect
notes, rocks, keepsakes, screenshots and souvenirs
because they carry the aura of something important –
we want to be able to return. These items live for free
in the museum.
There is an inherent and somewhat devastating
tension between life as it is lived and life as it is historicized.
The western museological tradition stands
tall as one of the greatest artifacts of the pathological
human impulse to remember in an organized way. Life
is not only made up of words and things, it necessarily
includes affects and sensations that refuse categorization.
We know that everything we love cannot be systematically
apprehended because reality is in fact wild and
uncontrollable. The museum, hungry for rationality,
narrative and closure, sits there impotent. But these
same futile urges also produce the comforting sense
of legitimacy and protection against time that the museum
offers. The museum I am imagining here exists
everywhere and always in the hyper-present like a
whisper, vapor, or pollen swirling in the air.
I’m living in the MoILYSM, so when I’m driving to
work and I hear Stevie Nicks bellow time cast a
spell on you, but you won’t forget me, it sounds like
a prophecy. My sense of past, present and future
is collapsing and expanding like an accordion. The
same spotify generated radio station that brought me
“Silver Spring” starts playing “Junk” by Paul McCartney
– Parachutes, Army boots/Sleeping bags for two/
Sentimental jamboree/ “Buy, buy”/Says the sign in the
shop window/ “Why, why?”/Says the junk in the yard/
Candlesticks, building bricks/Something old and new/
Memories for you and me. I try hard not to include the
entire song but I do want everything to be included.
Each piece presented in MoILYSM is imbued with
the love and energy of its use. Stone Tape Theory,
popularized in the Victorian era by thinkers such as
Charles Babbage, presupposes that elements in the
physical environment are capable of recording and
storing human thoughts and emotions. This is closely
associated with psychometry, which purports that it is
possible to glean extra-sensory information through
contact with physical objects. Babbage is widely considered
to be the father of the modern computer. He
writes:
Every atom impressed with good and with ill retains at
once the motions which philosophers and sages have
imparted to it mixed and combined in ten thousand
ways with all that is worthless and base.… the air
we breathe is the never-ending historian of the sentiments
we have uttered.
The MOILYSM tracks what exists sensorily, emotionally
and temporally between brain and object for the
purpose of establishing art as evidence of life. The
work here is unifi ed by a shared engagement with the
tension between handicrafts and technologies, the
spirit of collage (it is the act of choosing things to be
in a group that makes them important), collecting and
personal archiving habits, and a sense of stewardship
of ordinary materials.
The items exhibited here endeavor to draw our attention
to the aura and aliveness that brought them into
being in the fi rst place. Time cast a spell on you, but
you won’t forget me. “Why, why?”/Says the junk in the
yard. MoILYSM privileges a sympathetic response
over an intellectual one. The artist’s mobile in the
window tilts towards the sun, containing a delicate
balancing act of various items submitted as “artistic
refuse.” Anyone is welcome to contribute. I love you
so much.
The Museum of I Love You So Much (#1) is the first iteration of an
ongoing creative investigation by artist Hannah Tishkoff.
