Check it, this French guy has built a replica of the entire city of Paris in his backyard out of, you guessed it, trash!
Note: The caption says he’s been working on this project for 15 years and is only 29. Talk about life’s work. Perhaps I can track him down for a Q&A on lifelong obsessions!
Via Boing Boing! (Thanks for the tip, Brendan)
Berlusconi claims he’ll be stepping in the end the Naples trash crisis. While that would be nice to believe, Sivlio doesn’t have the best rep for doing what’s best for Italians.
Photo via UPI
This week in trash news:
Pixar still via the LATimes
My friend Jenny in Italy sent me this link to a film called Biùtiful Cauntri, an Italian trash documentary. We’re still searching for a subtitled version for those of us who need them. Jenny sent this note after a recent trip to the front lines of the trash war:
“The situation in the area around Naples is still devastating, this is what this documetantary talks about. The mafia has been dumping toxic waste into farm land for over 14 years, what we are seeing in the papers isn’t news to the neapolitans.”
This week in trash news:
Photo of Baku via advantour.com (apparently it doesn’t look dirty at night and from the sky).
Oh no, the trash crisis in Naples isn’t over.
In my humble opinion, any article that includes the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” should include a picture. This one by the Cristian Science Monitor does not (oddly, they went for audio instead), but we’ll let them slide just this once since they found the only interesting angle on today’s Naples trash crisis update. It appears Italy will have to defend itself at the European Court of Justice for bad trash management…
“But what the EU is tackling through the courts, artists here have been taking on with their paintbrushes and movie cameras. From trash-themed satires of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” to music played with abandoned mattresses, these a artists are finding creative and ironic ways to express the malaise of living amid the rotting piles of waste. After years of largely unfulfilled promises from politicians, the grass-roots movement is also trying to use artwork to put forward practical solutions, such as increasing the region’s dismal recycling rates.”
Photo via Rain News
This week in trash news:
(Photo by Mark Lennihan for the AP)
Norway-based, French-raised, Tunisian-born artist Samir M’kadmi is perhaps the only man international and open-minded enough to have curated the trash art show, seminar and catalog “Recycling the Looking Glass“. As you are well aware by now, due to my constant raving since returning, the show opening was a huge success. Despite the demands of a crazy schedule putting on international exhibitions and keeping up with work of his own, Samir kindly agreed to provide everydaytrash readers with a bit more depth on the making of the Oslo show and where trash art falls in the art historical cannon.
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everydaytrash: How did the concept for “Recycling the Looking Glass” come about?
M’kadmi : “Recycling the looking-glass” is a result of research and interrogations on topics related to contemporary art, our environment, and global society. Through “Recycling the looking-glass” I tried to re-conceptualise crucial interrogations of globalisation, environmental and cultural issues by resituating these topics not only at an aesthetic level, but also by interrogating and exposing their ethical dimension. These interrogations also occupy a major place in our Norwegian media debates. Of course, these kinds of topics are not specific to Norway. They are global. But, the way these issues are addressed, in Europe, Scandinavia and specifically here in Norway, through our major media, is quite disturbing.
In fact, we can summarise the debate in a few terms: Islamophobia, racism, poverty, immigration, war and terrorism, climate and environmental changes. The first six topics relate to globalisation, cultural and geopolitical domination matters, where concepts such as cleanliness and purity are very often used as metaphors for “our” Western culture and values, and uncleanliness and impurity as metaphors for the “other’s” culture and values. Although this point of view does not reflect the opinion of the majority of Norwegians, it does reflects the opinion of about 17.5 percent of Norwegian voters, which approximately corresponds with the number of voters for the Progress Party (the extreme right).
This point of view, the “other” perceived as a threat, as impurity, as trash, seems also to be the only means of access into the media debate. This is a debate initiated and defined by the editors of the major national newspapers, such as the conservative Aftenposten.
Climate and the environment are tightly linked to the first topics. Here again, the interrogation seems to be blocked between two points of views, one that supports the UN Climate Report and another that opposes it. Here again we find the same political constellation. On the one hand, we have the extreme right, (the Progress Party), which tends to reduce the climate report to a big hoax, on the other hand we find the other political parties who swear by the report and propose some cosmetic environmental solutions. The aim of this debate is how to reduce the discharge of toxic emissions. In short, waste, as toxic emissions, as household or industrial trash, seems to be a common denominator for globalisation, climate change, environmental, and cultural issues. How do contemporary artists deal with these questions? Do they deal with these questions at all? What can artists tell us about trash, recycling, reducing and reusing? Does trash or decay have any aesthetic value? What is the relationship between archiving and trashing? These are just a few of the questions that contributed to the elaboration of the concept behind “Recycling the looking-glass”.
(artist Jan Franciscus de Gier discusses the Euro pallets he and partner Vigdis Haugtrø contributed to the show with a Nowegian artist attending the opening)
everydaytrash: How did you select the participating artists?
M’kadmi : Selecting the artists for “Recycling the looking-glass” was tightly bound to the development of the exhibition concept itself. It is a work in progress, and a complicated process because it demands a lot of research, especially if you want to articulate simultaneously different approaches and practices in the same context. Every artist represents a unique and at the same time complex position. When you present artworks made by different artists, side by side, you create not only an opportunity to investigate the artworks, and question the artists behind them, you also provide an occasion to confront your own presuppositions and ideas on art, trash and society.
everydaytrash: One question raised at the seminar was what is the line between art and politics and is there a definable border. What do you think?
M’kadmi : I consider the artist to be an intellectual and a political subject. There is no line between art and life. Art is life, art is science, art is philosophy, art is poetry, and art is politics… The French philosopher Jacques Ranciere describes the political subject, among other things, as a non-static entity and a vector of change. He or she only exists through their actions, through their capacity to change the given landscape, to make visible, to show what was hidden or not perceivable. The political subject opens up the political field through his/her activities, beyond the parameters of all known and accepted political institutions.
We are, everywhere, confronted by interests and ideologies that tend to reduce the artist only to a producer of commodities, rejecting any thoughts and ideas that are not compatible with the idea of the artwork as an open creation, and the idea of the work of art as an object. Utility value is, and has always been, a key theme in an art context, in particular if one eradicates the distinction between the ethical and the aesthetic, as did e.g. Marcel Duchamp with his Fountain in 1917. I situate art’s utility value in its freedom and independence, in its autonomy. In short, the political subject exists as the effective manifestation of the capacity of anyone to personally engage in common affairs.
(Duchamp’s Fountain)
everydaytrash: What is the connection between found object and trash art?
M’kadmi : Trash art is an art form that insists on a status as waste. Found objects on the other hand, cling tightly to the identity of the object. Found objects are, as the name indicates, a found object, “un objet trouvé”. It is an object that has retained its integrity but has been removed from its original context.
Dadaism and the Surrealists attacked High Art by introducing elements from reality in their works. Kurt Schwitters created art from “ détritus”, “l’art du détritus”. Marcel Duchamp’s readymade gave another dimension to “L’object trouvé”: appropriation, ‘détournement’, subversion, etc.
(Schwitters‘ “Cherry Picture”)
From Dadaism to Surrealism, to Pop Art, and Situationism to Fluxus and Nouveau Realism and today’s post-modern Trash art and Found objects, we find here many enthralling issues and discourses, both aesthetic as well as socio-political. Trash art questions received aesthetic conventions.
Junk is a powerful medium that must be given an artistic design: Robert Rauschenberg, César, Ben, J.Beuys, David Hammons, Jimmie Durham…The boundary between trash art and found objects is not watertight.
Kjartan Slettemark’s Cocaflower is trash, because an empty Coca Cola can is by definition empty packaging, in other words, trash, recyclable material. South African Willie Bester’s horrifying sculptures of recycled metals that depict cold uniformed giants riding ridiculous war machines are trash, because the objects used in the construction appear as junk. Benin artist Romuald Hazoumé’s African masks made of plastic containers and other garbage strike similar chords. Roddy Bell’s fans and frames are found objects because they are perceived as fans and frames. Safaa Errua’s pillowcases and shoes are representations of found objects; Jon Gundersen’s briefcase with a pacifier is both a found object and trash, because it combines both. Vigdis Haugtrø and Jan Franciscus de Gier’s Europallets painted with rosemaling are modified found objects; Bill Morrison’s film clip compositions are found footage …
See the publication “Recycling the looking-glass”.
(Recycling the Looking Glass-Trash Art-Found Object)
everydaytrash: How does trash art fit into the canon of accepted and appreciated media? What is the future of trash art?
M’kadmi : In our global art history, a history that is not yet written, Trash art is already an integrated genre. Trash, both as raw material and sign, has a major place in our global contemporary art. Many artworks made of trash are already canonised.
But, in spite of this canonisation Trash remains a “hot” matter because it often entails an implicit, if not explicit, critique of society. For the artist, trash is not solely signs, symptoms, markers, evidence and indicators of interpersonal experience and the various different existential foundations of all humans, but a signifying material for communication and expression.
Asking about the future of Trash art is like asking about our future relation to waste and all that is refused, denied, is in a way asking about our future relation to death.
(Samir and Nasra relax after the opening)
I watched Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse this weekend, the Belgian film about the French law requiring farmers to allow peasants to collect the leftovers after seasonal harvests that I posted on last week. It was fantastic. Complete with a very present eccentric narrator. For others who haven’t yet seen it, here’s a preview from a British TV station. My favorite was a gourmet chef in the country who picks his own herbs, veggies and grapes from other people’s farms after harvest and cooks and serves them at his restaurant. There are some touchingly somber scenes as well depicting those who really need free produce to get by.
I met a lot of amazing people last weekend in Oslo. One of the most inspiring was Nasra Ali Omar, a Somali-Norwegian who grew up in Somalia, then Kenya then Northern Norway. Nasra was helping out with the trash art/found object show, but her real passion is music. And environmentally friendly music at that. She and her collaborators are committed to releasing their music in electronic files only, never burned onto CDs that end up in the trash.
Still more amazing is the technology she’s developing to debut in Norway later this year. Using motion sensors designed for medical examinations and blue tooth technology, Nasra manipulates a series of electric pads stuck to her fingers and arms that allow her to affect the intensity of her sound while playing the drums, play back pre-recorded beats and lay a track while performing , adding layer upon layer to her sound. She performs with a dancer, also fitted with the sensors so that the dancer and her movements can control the music as well. Others have tried similar programming in the past, but always with lots of wires or having to wear an entire electric jacket. With the small sensors and wireless blue tooth, Nasra and co. are breaking new ground. A bit off the subject of garbage, but trashtastic nonetheless!
In other music news, and to reroot ourselves in the subject of trash, Neopolitan musicians have made lemonade out of the recent trash crisis in Naples. “Garbage Sound” is music made using instruments crafted from things found in the trash.
(That’s Nasra above, striking a silly pose during the opening of Recycling the Looking Glass)
I read this in The Guardian on the plane back from Oslo, seems pretty cool. Apparently some English schools are buying fabric from the Chinese made from recycled coke bottles and having that fabric made into school uniforms. Though a bit more expensive than the old materials, the recycled material helps any school who uses it meet carbon footprint quotas set by the state. I guess the bigger question is, what do we think of these quotas?
Photo from Keetsa.com of plastic bottle hoodie.
“Hi hi” from Oslo. I’m here attending the opening of “Recycling the Looking Glass, Trash Art-Found Objects” a wonderful group show curated by the incomparable Samir M’kadmi. Much, much more will be posted here about the show, the contributors and organizers. At the moment, I’ll throw up a couple photos from the opening seminar and the piece I submitted to the catalog (my talk was basically a longer version of what’s below). Other panalists included a feminist art critic, an economist and an ecologist who uses trash art projects to teach kids about the environment. Two artists also gave talks. Stay tuned for less Leila-centric posts very soon, I have met amazing artists and art world peeps from all over the World this weekend and can’t wait to share the virtual booty with all of you!
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A Short History of Garblogging
My obsession with trash began when, as a journalism student in New York City, I started researching the unimaginable number of tax dollars spent each year transferring garbage from my hometown to places as far away as the middle of the country.
New York closed it’s only landfill in 2001 with no immediate plans for what to do with all the trash created by the millions of local residents and businesses. The immediate solution was to export the waste to other states, an expensive venture involving enormous contracts with private waste haulers. Previously, the city had evacuated the majority of its trash on barges pulled by tugboats. This new plan created a billion-dollar-a-year industry and added significantly to the number of trucks circling the already congested city streets.
Not surprisingly, the poorest neighborhoods bore the brunt of these changes. In order for the garbage to be moved long distances, it had to be emptied from local dump trucks and packed up again into larger vehicles. This transfer of trash—a smelly process that attracts rats—continues to take place in several of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
While the story I was writing focused on local politics, my fascination with garbage extended far beyond the United States. I started to see trash as everything from an indicator of poverty to a medium for art. Before long, everyone I knew associated me with trash and when they came across related factoids, I would receive an email. So I started a blog. The Internet seemed to be the perfect outlet for these tidbits and the perfect venue to start a larger conversation.
(French economist Gérard Bertolini, me, Panama-based American artist Donna Conlon)
The wonderful thing about the World Wide Web is that if you have a pet interest, it is easy to locate whole communities of people who share that interest. And so it was for me with trash. Soon after launching everydaytrash.com, over two years ago now, I discovered a universe of other sites dealing with interrelated themes. Because my interest in the subject had grown from local politics, it took me some time to think of everytrash.com as an environmental or “green” blog.
My audience had no such doubts. I quickly realized that the majority of people interested in trash are interested in reducing waste and approach the issue in terms of saving the planet. I came across people keeping track of their own waste online, weighing their garbage each day and trying hard to make less the next. And there were sales sites, marketing niche environmentally-friendly products to those willing to pay a bit more for a clear conscience. There appears to be a huge market out there for reusable tote bags, organic baby clothes and business card holders made from recycled gasoline.
It doesn’t take much exploration into the world of trash to see that, fundamentally, trash is an economic and class issue. Only those less fortunate ever have to worry about what happens to what society discards. The rest of society, on the other hand, sleepwalks through life believing that trash disappears the moment it hits the bottom of a trash can.
Early on in the life of the blog, I became interested in trash pickers, communities of people who go through the trash and find new uses for what others have chucked. In Argentina, China and Egypt and probably many other places, there are words for these people and the practice is associated with very particular ethnic groups. In many other places, people supplement their income by collecting and redeeming cans or hunting for and selling scrap metal. Sifting through the smattering of articles that pop up each year on trash pickers, I am constantly reminded of the wastefulness of the era I live in.
(”Garblogging” translated in the English/Norweigan catalog–love it!)
Once you notice trash, it’s hard to ignore. Around the time I was pouring through New York’s solid waste management plans, my job at a public health nonprofit began taking me to Africa. There, I encountered a relationship with material goods entirely foreign to me. Terms like recycling and zero waste have no place in these societies where value and lifespan of any given product are given their full respect. In places where people have very little, these concepts are organic.
I met a roadside tailor in Malawi who spent his days mending the worn clothing of local villagers, squeezing extra days, weeks and months out of the worn fabric. In Uganda, women from the North, an area burdened by enduring violence and high rates of HIV/AIDS, form beads out of old magazine pages that they then shellac to create brightly colored bracelets and necklaces. Women in Kenya collect floating flip flops from the ocean to refashion into crafts to sell; one project has even created a giant whale out of the discarded plastic shoes to raise awareness about the dangers of plastic waste to marine life. Plastic bags in Burkina Faso are twisted into small dolls and sold to tourists. While the African cultures I visited varied dramatically, the unmistakable smell of burning garbage welcomed me the moment I stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac in a new city.
In fact, many of the news articles I read while traveling focused the depletion of Africa’s resources and the threat of disease. The contrast between the joyful and hopeful efforts of the beaders and doll makers and the overall pessimism of news coverage on Africa fed my enthusiasm for blogging. I was glad to have a forum to highlight positive, homegrown responses to seemingly overwhelming problems.
Of course many positive approaches to the subject of trash come from the artistic community. Through everydaytrash.com, I have discovered “trashion” designers who create fantastical outfits from discarded items as well as countless artists who use trash as a dynamic medium with which to create provocative pieces. What I love most about these works is their effortless incorporation of an often dense political topic. Trashtastic!
That last post reminded me of a layover I had once in Amsterdam and these gallery-quality trash cans I saw in a store window. Kind of silly if you ask me.
