So, about this whole 'nihilism art' thing I've been fiddling with. It sounds kinda heavy, right? But honestly, it started pretty simply, just me messing around, trying to make sense of, well, the lack of sense in a lot of things.
How It Kicked Off
I didn't wake up one day and decide, "Today, I embrace the void through art!" Nah, it was more of a slow burn. I was spending a lot of time just looking at stuff, you know? Like, real mundane things. A crack in the pavement, a forgotten shopping list, the way dust settles on things nobody's touched in ages. There was something weirdly compelling about it.
My first attempts were, frankly, terrible. I tried drawing these grand, gloomy scenes, but it felt forced. Like I was trying too hard to be 'deep'. It just wasn't clicking. I had a bunch of old magazines and junk mail lying around, and one afternoon, out of sheer boredom, I started cutting out words and images that felt... empty. Not sad, just blank. I stuck them together, no real plan. The result was this weird, disjointed thing that actually made me chuckle. It was so pointless, it was almost perfect.
Getting into the Groove
That's when I sort of stumbled onto the path. I started collecting more "nothing" stuff. Receipts for things I couldn't remember buying, broken bits of plastic, dried-up leaves. My workspace started looking like a very sad magpie's nest.
- The Process: I'd lay things out, move them around. Sometimes I'd paint over them, often in dull, washed-out colors. Sometimes I'd just leave them as they were, a little pile of meaninglessness.
- The 'Art': It wasn't about making something beautiful, or even something that made a statement. It was more about capturing that feeling of "so what?". I made a series of tiny sculptures out of dust bunnies and glue. Sounds gross, I know, but it felt right. Another time, I meticulously copied out error messages from my computer onto fancy paper.
The key, for me, was not to overthink it. The moment I tried to inject some grand philosophical meaning, it fell flat. The real juice was in the honest portrayal of that shrug, that "meh" feeling.
Why This, Though? My Little Detour...
You might be wondering why I'd even bother. Well, it connects back to this job I had a few years ago. It wasn't a bad job, not really. Decent pay, okay people. But there was this one project. Oh man, this project.
My boss, let's call him Dave, got this bee in his bonnet about "synergistic data realignment." Sounds fancy, right? It meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. For six months, my main task was to manually transfer data from one ancient spreadsheet format to another, slightly less ancient, but equally useless spreadsheet format. Every day, hours of it. Column A to Column F, Column B to Column G, but only if Column C had a Tuesday in it, unless it was a leap year. That kind of soul-crushing nonsense.
I'd ask Dave, "What's the end goal here? How will this improve anything?" He'd just beam and say, "It's all about optimizing the workflow, my boy! Think of the synergy!" There was no synergy. The data wasn't even being used. I found out later the whole project was just something he'd cooked up to look busy for his boss.
I remember one Thursday, I spent a solid eight hours trying to reconcile two cells that refused to match. The difference? One had a space after the number, the other didn't. That was my day. My contribution to society. Fixing a rogue space.
When that project finally, mercifully got canned (because Dave moved to another department to "synergize" something else), I just felt... hollow. All that effort, all that meticulous, mind-numbing work, for absolutely nothing. It didn't even make it into an archive. It just vanished. Poof.
That feeling, that profound sense of pointlessness, stuck with me. So, when I started making these little bits of 'nihilism art', it was almost like therapy. It was me taking that feeling and saying, "Okay, I see you. You're ridiculous. Let's play." It wasn't about wallowing; it was about acknowledging the absurdity and finding a weird kind of peace in it.
So yeah, that's my journey into making art about nothing. It's not for everyone, and it sure ain't gonna win any awards. But it's my thing. And sometimes, making something out of nothing feels like the most honest thing to do.
