by emerson koch

In my self portrait collage, I used a person from another part of Bosch’s triptych, and warped it into a fitting position, and added my head as well as a fitting texture and color. Onto that, I added music on my bum, further drawing a connection from this part of the painting to the final, more hellish one. It is as if my body ends up in the last part because of my own follies. Some of these follies can be seen in this work. In the moment of excitement at the fresh world, as if it were made for me to harvest, my arm is outstretched to grab an apple from the tree. I reach towards it with a cool deserving aire, because the illusion is that it belongs to me. That nature is something for us to steal from and rob without any consequence. As I am sure is obvious, what I am reaching for does not appear to be an apple; instead, what is depicted is what I see; my signified, money.
Of course, the idea that a tree is growing something that is so arbitrary of a social construct as money, is absurd. However, the money is not a presence in reality; instead it is a depiction of the illusion that I, and by extension of the commentary being made, the world, see. When we see nature, we see it as a resource, something to be dominated and ransacked. 
In reaching for what is not mine, there is a sort of universal lesson, one laden with irony, especially considering my earlier assertion that nature has no plan nor intention for us. This point still stands though, if only enough consideration is given. The branch did not break because I deserved retribution, it broke because it could not physically bear my weight, I broke the branch, it did not break under me. This once again is the question of agency, and in this case, by exerting my agency over nature, I unintentionally submitted to the consequence, hence the bleeding foot. 
Finally, going back to the music on my rear, there is a connection with something we looked at in class. In the painting, the “Ambassadors”, a misfigured image of a skull stands in the front of the painting, painfully present and yet encoded. This provides a unique relationship between the subjects, the men in the painting, and the person surveying the artwork. From only a very specific angle, is it clear that the odd shaped white streak is indeed a form; that of a skull. The angle is only possible for the audience to arrive at, and thus, the person serving the painting knows more than the figures in it. There is a kind of joke here as well, because we know something that they do not, and although the exact meaning of the skull is unclear, it seems to say that we know that they will die. In their literal and metaphorical positions, because of their power, they are woefully unaware of the object in front of them. In a way, it seems to say, power blinds people from the reality that they will die just like us all. This connects to the storm in The Tempest, because in the moment of reckoning, all social class is meaningless, rich or poor, the storm is the same. 
Back at my collage, the music on my butt is like the skull in the “Ambassadors” painting. I cannot see it, due to its unfortunate position, and so only the onlooker knows what resides there. The music is a symbol, just like the skull, because it is the final verse from the song, “End of the World.” Though rather on the nose, the name of the song can hardly be recognized, because the sheet music is distorted across me. The music can only be fully seen from the vantage point directly behind me, not at the odd angle the idle person sees it from.