By Ryan Sewell
The life experience and identity of collectors are reflected in what they have accumulated, said UC Santa Barbara professor William Davies King, who alongside New York University assistant professor, Rebecca Falkoff, recently hosted a talk on the relationship collecting and hoarding have with art and the mind.
“As a house fills with collecting, so does a life,” King explained as he described the importance that collecting has had for him throughout his life.
This discussion was hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) on Zoom and was part of its ongoing Critical Mass series.
Susan Derwin, director of the IHC, opened the discussion and facilitated the talk. It was followed by a dramatic reading of King’s work, Collections of Nothing Enough is Enough, in which King essentially held up an existential mirror, reflecting on his life as he played himself and gave side commentary.
UCSB Theater professor King has spent his lifetime collecting a plethora of items that he considers to be ‘nothing.’ This nothing includes cereal boxes, hotel key cards, dictionaries, and Cheez-It boxes.
UCSB Theater professor William Davies King’s shows a Zoom audience his Cheez-It collection.
King displayed his collection artistically. For example, his dictionary collection became what he called “paradictionaries,” which were books of the cut-out pictures in the dictionaries, but with no words.
King said differences between him and his parents shaped his impulse to collect and his perception of it. King’s parents pushed him to pursue a career in the medical field, which would be following in their footsteps. But he knew early on that he was destined for the humanities. His parents did not support this decision so he found refuge in discovering artistic expression and truth by way of his habitual hoarding.
While King discussed his artistic and personal experience of collecting, Italian studies assistant professor Rebecca Falkoff focused on the identity of the hoarder and ultimately why hoarding happens. The hoarder’s identity is part of the collection that they have, Falkoff explained. These items hold “sentimental, instrumental, and intrinsic value to them.”
Falkoff believes habitual hoarders “keep things for the same reason as everyone else.” She said hoarders do not gauge whether an item makes logical sense within a space, and that it is the space that makes them feel safe. The more items within a space, the safer the hoarder will feel.
Theater professor and longtime collector William Davies King and and a group of actors performed a reading of his memoir Collections of Nothing Enough is Enough.
King’s staged reading of his play, Collections of Nothing Enough is Enough, took place two hours after the initial talk and offered insights into his lifetime of collection. The play re-enacted various episodes of King’s life, showing different examples of what King added to his collection and when. It delved into what inspired those acts, such as moments of conflict with his parents, that led him to become a self-proclaimed “professor of nothing.” The reading featured some of King’s actual family members as characters, with actors playing his parents and other people along the way. King narrated and acted in the play.
Ryan Swell is third year Global Studies major at UC Santa Barbara. He covered this event for his Writing Program class Journalism for Web and Social Media.