I think of this as my primary method of research and assembly, making use of whatever comes to hand, seeking and being amused at serendipities encountered, reveling in unexpected connections, privileging 'creativity'...bricolage is made up of brics... a realization that wants further exploration, and is part and parcel of 'collage'
my collection of links, 1999 and 2026
Bricolage Wikipedia
Intrapreneurial bricolage Wikipedia
1.1960 The process or technique of creating a new artwork, concept, etc., by appropriating a diverse miscellany of existing materials or sources.1960 Adolescence is the period par excellence of bricolage—fiddling and tinkering with devices. R. G. Cohn, Writer's Way in France ii. ii. 101
1966 The characteristic feature of mythical thought, as of 'bricolage' on the practical plane, is that it builds up structured sets..by using the remains and debris of events. translation of C. Lévi-Strauss, Savage Mind i. 21
1986 The storyteller, an artist in bricolage, has to make do with what his preconscious has given him in the way of character fragments. A. Greeley, God Game (1987) i. 15
2002 Punk's principal aesthetics were montage and bricolage: the attempt to break down the relics of a period of over-consumption and to render the pace of an accelerated age. NFT Programme Booklet (National Film Theatre) June 14/2
2.
1971 An object or concept created or constructed by appropriating a diverse miscellany of existing materials or sources, particularly (in Art) of found objects. Also in weakened sense: a miscellaneous collection of accumulated objects or detritus.1971 His photographs divide along definite lines of contrast. The most obvious is...a contrast between the bricolage of popular life and small trading, and the formal plan of the aristocratic parks. Times 21 December 8/6
1991 Unusually for a British painter, he periodically makes sculptures or objects, bricolages of painted junk in which his homunculi wander as though through ominous urban settings. Art in Amer. April 181/1
2011 Inevitably, the camera is drawn to the studio's telling romantic details—the eloquent detritus on the floor, the..scarified walls, the accumulated bricolage of the creative mind. Art Quarterly Spring 62/2
❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ How We Domesticate (not Adopt) Technologies Giles Crouch
...We domesticate a technology through bricolage (a process of repurposing, finding additional uses beyond what the technology was invented for), like we use spreadsheets for far more than just creating financial statements. Then we develop rituals, such as evening doomscrolling or reading the newsBricolage origins and evolution Thomas Aston at Medium
...the official origins of the word bricolage come from anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in The Savage Mind. The word is derived from the French verb bricoler ("to tinker") and linked to the term bricoleur which means 'a jack-of-all-trades.' In essence, it refers to the reuse a heterogeneous repertoire of available materials to solve new problemsIn art, bricolage refers to the construction, or creation, of an artwork from what materials are available or can be found. It generally emerged as part of post-modern art practice, finding expression in surrealism, dada, cubism and most notably in assemblage art. Formally, it was said to have emerged from Pablo Picasso's cubism, but most explicitly found expression in German Dadaist artist Kurt Schwitters' collage, or Merz, technique of scavenging scrap materials (see below). The term Merz itself was borrowed from the suffix of the German word for commerce: Kommerz.
...So, in art, there's a sense of retrieval, borrowing, repurposing, re-configuring and re-signifying everyday found objects into an artistic setting.
...In qualitative research, Norman Denzin and Egon Lincoln referred to the qualitative researcher as a bricoleur or "quilt maker" who borrows from many different disciplines, perspectives, theories, or methods, working between and within competing and overlapping paradigms and perspectives and the result is a ‘"set of fluid, interconnected images and representations." It speaks to a kind of "eclectic methodological pluralism," as Robert Chambers put it. We can see here a slightly different form of skilled worker in this image. Not hobbyist gentleman or handyman jack-of-all-trades out in public life, but a domestic quilt maker. Perhaps what Denzin and Lincoln best convey here is a disposition of open-mindedness, pluralism, and dialogue.
...There are multiple different words for bricolage, but I think it doesn't really matter which we use. Mosaics, jigsaws, tapestries, patchworks, quilts, montages, collages, combines, assemblages are all variations of a similar theme and are functional equivalents. All of these are metaphors to refer to how diverse elements fit together to create a multi-perspectival and multi-coloured whole. They merely have slightly different organisational schemas. It is not that one media or mode is always superior to one another. It depends on the context which is the most appropriate organisational schema. Sometimes a fixed mosaic tile doesn't fit.
...It is also worth acknowledging that there is almost always a mixture of purposeful design and contextual improvisation. There is also a clear need for integration and for that integration to be coherent. And perhaps finally, there seems to be some need for legibility (or transparency). Creative and flexible integration all sounds lovely, but it's not always that easy to achieve.
Bricolage — a systematic review, conceptualization, and research agenda in Sara Mateus & Soumodip Sarkar Entrepreneurship & Regional Development (2023) (full text)