In my freshman year of college I heard the name Kurt Schwitters for the first time. I was taking an English class in modernism and we were learning about some of the multimedia artists of the early 20th century.
My professor handed out copies of a small black and white portrait of a very serious looking man with a tidy suit and a mustache, saying something to the effect of, "Feel free to modify him as you want, stick things to him, draw on him, he would appreciate it." As we proceeded to doodle on his face, we learned about this man. Kurt Schwitters was born in 1887 in Hannover, Germany, and was active in Dadaist groups there and throughout Europe. When his work was deemed "degenerate" by Nazi authorities, he fled to Norway and later to England where he spent the rest of his life.
He engaged in various multimedia forms like spoken and written poetry, but one word that is very important for learning about Schwitters is "merz". It is a form of collage that Schwitters worked on throughout his artistic career. The word itself reportedly was extracted from the phrase Commerz Bank as it appeared on a piece of paper in one of Schwitters' collages. A story that my professor told us about this was that if Schwitters liked someone he might try to nick some of their personalia to use for a piece, like a pencil they had chewed on, a ticket stub, or a thread from their coat, something that they had lived with for a time.
His pieces ranged from framed wall art to living structures like his Merzbau where he turned his house into one huge collage, featuring various themed 'grottoes'. The walls, ceilings and windows all came to be layers thick with found objects like scraps of paper, cigarettes, bits of machinery, paint, pamphlets, and any other oddity that he found intriguing.
The thing that I initially loved about Schwitters' merz was the idea of trying to capture concepts, places, or people with the flotsam and jetsam that surrounded them. I myself have long been a memorabilia keeper, becoming attached to unremarkable things simply based on their proximity to an important event, or being from an important time. For years I kept a box of bottle caps, postcards, sugar packets, and business cards, occasionally going through and putting like things in their own folder for a sort of time capsule effect. I felt a kinship with Schwitters' use of things, but also felt cautious of succumbing totally to the hoarder urge and building a merzbau of my own.
Long after my English class, I kept my little modified portrait of Kurt Schwitters. I had given him earrings, glasses, and a post-it note captain's hat. The spirit of his work was inspiring but also gave me a little laugh when I needed it. When I learned that I would have the opportunity to spend a semester in Berlin and would be documenting my time there in a blog, it seemed like the perfect time to embrace my love of merz.
As I document my experiences in the Berlin program I will use my own version of "merz" in two ways. I will seek out aspects of merz in Berlin society and visual culture, but also making my own little merz projects as a way to capture experiences of cultural difference and exploration. Let the merz begin!
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