The Joseph Cornell App
Supposedly there was this guy Cornellwho wanted to vindicate nostalgiaas a feeling and hammered togethersmall boxes in which he’d place aluminumflowers magazine clippingsand pics of girls in ballerina posesplus odd trinkets he’d foundon the street the wiki says he had parasiticeyebrows and his arrangementswere like bread crumbs luringusers to a forgotten pastof foundling chips and bottle capsdoilies pinballs bits of bitsI’ve had our coders meticulouslyupload close-ups of his artinto our servers design botsto crack their mystery and stealfrom their psychic structureswe’ll earn more clickssince nostalgia is like an unrepentantfrenemy that stuns usback to the luminous dashboardof our past when we all hadreal coins to spend in our pocketsthe wiki notes that Cornellprobably had x-ray visionand carried on conversationswith his dog he lived with his momwhich may account for the pervadingmood of stasis and dynamismin his dioramic projectswhen trying to fall asleep latelyI’ve imagined his hands hammeringgluing arranging those boxesin his basement he probably thoughtthat art rewards prolongedattention come to think of itit’s an ethos upon which we maycapitalize as we find ourselves inthis company gambling so muchof our shared future on the pastwhile the present is representedas salvaged images of birdsand broken shells and sometimesa few etchings of codeif we indeed hammer togethera Cornell app as some sortof last recourse before human despairglues us to the faces of our devicesthe user’s screen should feel avianor aquatic contain a glimmerof our past in the glass behind.
