Archive of Odds and Ends
Conversation with Marc Parenteau
April 18, 2004

Valerie LeBlanc: You are presently completing third year studies in the Media Arts & Digital Technologies Program at the Alberta College of Art & Design. Can you tell me more about your background?

Marc Parenteau: I am originally from Saskatoon; I mainly grew up there. I studied in the BFA Program at the University of Saskatchewan before coming to Calgary. I sort of specialized in printmaking and photography, and I did some digitally based work. I started there in 1994 and graduated in 1998. Digital was just starting to be offered in 1997 and I took a few courses in it. After graduating, I took some time off and just moved around before deciding that things in my life were kind of boring. I decided to go back to school because that was what I was interested in. I wanted to try something new out, to explore video and other digital media.

VL: I know that you collect and archive things. Can you tell me what kinds of things?

MP: It goes through phases. Images, I go through newspapers, extensive stacks of magazines. I have a real problem with throwing things out and end up with stacks and stacks. For my Graduating exhibition at the University of Saskatoon, I re-photographed, from the computer screen, about 300 images that I collected. I reproduced them in collage, using black and white tungsten with blue tint, in large format, three feet by four and a half feet.

VL: Are you able to say what is the most important aspect of the things that you save and collect?

MP: How an image catches me has to be the most important thing. I have studied enough visual theory to recognize ‘what is being shown, and how I am supposed to react.’ Sometimes I can’t believe what is shown. I do a lot of collage work but don’t like to destroy ‘originals’, unless it is something really disposable like newspaper. But, if it is a magazine, I don't like to cut them up unless there is something that I can get more close to, like the original photo. As I do collage, collecting images fits in there, but I think that even if I wasn't working like that, I would still save things as it is interesting to go back and to look at them again.

VL: Are you at all interested in written articles?

MP: I just did a blog where I was fragmenting text and putting it into a different context. It is the first time that I have used text. I pulled the texts at random from two magazines. But it is mostly always visual; I will buy a magazine if an image interests me.

VL: How much stuff do you hang onto when you move?

MP: I keep a lot at my parents’ place. I know that I drive them crazy. I have magazines going back to the mid 80's, just anything that I know that I can keep. Sometimes I go through a phase where I try to 'tidy.' I go through things but I have a bookcase basically full of magazines and movies.

VL: So once you have gathered something, you have a hard time to get rid of it?

MP: Oh yes, I would just love to have more bookcases of ‘just stuff’ that I could just go back to.
I do have stacks. It is cool to go back and look through it. I don't know why, I just do.

VL: Someone brought to my attention that there are definite differences between collecting and archiving. What is your take on that?

MP: I think that I collect more than I archive. Once I get a couple of something, I want to have more of it, like multiples, a collection. Like weird little things, once I have one bowl, I think, ‘I like that, ‘ so why not three. Then the next thing I know, I have five or more.

VL: Do your parents collect?

MP: My mom always kind of encouraged me to collect. My dad is totally the opposite; he throws everything away. His attitude is that you read a magazine, and then you throw it. When I lived at home, I even stole some things that he wanted to throw away and I saved them. … As for encouragement from my Mom, if a new set of action figures came out, she would say, “You should get this series.” Then she would be the one to get me started. I have collections of everything from when I was a kid, little odds and ends, and things like stickers. I still collect music and comics. For archiving, I guess the only thing that I would say that I am archiving is my music collection. I have it in CD format and records. I just bought an external hard drive and am going to dedicate a couple of nights a week to sitting down and burning a few discs and archiving them. I have an eleven or twelve hundred CD collection right there alone.

VL: Do you have any take on why institutions, such as museums would collect?

MP: I guess it’s probably for the same reasons that individuals do, like the idea that if you want to go back and look at something later, it’s always there. You can go back and see what's been done. It is like you are either doing something for the first time, which is almost never the case, or it is kind of nice to see who has done stuff around you. At certain points you think that you are not going to look at other people's work, I never copy but if you try to do something, it always looks a bit different yet seems to becomes a sort of hybrid. I would like to know why I can’t part with some things but it always seems that there will always be a use for something that I save.

 

- Valerie LeBlanc
August 18, 2004

 

 

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