Rubbish

Currently reading: Gillian Whiteley – JUNK: Art and the Politics of Trash (Part 2)

Chapter 1: Rehabilitating Rubbish: Histories, Value and Aesthetics

“This chapter considers some of the histories, definitions and shifting values of detritus in its diverse forms and the implications of all that for a subsequent consideration of ‘junk art’ within an aesthetic and non-aesthetic context.” (p.14)

For Whiteley, “Trash [is] a key social anthropological site for the examination of a range of discourses to do with local and global politics and economics.” (p.12)

On defining rubbish:

Whiteley cites that the rubbish tip has been rebranded [by the waste industry] as the recycling centre and is now a privatised business. (p.12)

She quotes Strasser: “What counts as trash depends on who’s counting.” (Waste & Want, 1999, p.3)

In the chapter section Trash Histories: Rags, Bones and Refuse, Whiteley defines rubbish as, “excess mater resulting from industrialisation and urbanisation.” (p.14)

On value (Trash Values, p.22-24), Whiteley takes the definition: (n.) anything of little use or value, and (v.) to discard as worthless [from Online Etymology Dictionary]. She also cites Mary Douglas’ definition of trash as “matter out of place.” All dirt is relative she asserts. “Generally, at the point of dislocation*, stuff usually consists of leftovers and remainders – waste or unwanted material – from some activity or process. *Dislocated stuff being refuse from the old French refus meaning to outcast and waste.

“Attempts to define trash lead back to a fundamental link to systems of value which are time and place specific. There is no material which is intrinsically trash.” Trash is a socially and culturally constructed concept. “The word, like its physical manifestation, is in a continually shifting state of conceptual, symbolic and material flux.” (p.24)

On categorisation:

“The history of waste has been the history of separating organic human waste from the rest. Processing rubbish involves sorting and categorising forms of waste.” (p.14) Whiteley cites Strasser again here in regards to the proposition that trash is created by sorting.

Whiteley also cites Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin in regards to the chiffonier [rag-picker] and the 19^th century preoccupation and romanticism with the cycle of production. (p.16-17)

She quotes William Rathje [who coined the term and field of study garbology]; “Sorting garbage is the ultimate zen experience of our society […] because you feel it, ou smell it, you record it, you are in tactile intimacy with it. Some time or other everybody ought to sort garbage.” – quotes in Colleen p. Popson’s exhibition review Museums: The Truth is in Our Trash.

In talking about shit (p.24), Whiteley suggests that categories of waste are on a scale from the lowest form; human waste, through to common everyday stuff to considering rehabilitation and celebration – “from trash to treasure.”

Referencing Yves-Alain Bois & Rosalind Krauss’ Formless: A User’s Guide (MIT Press, 2000), Whiteley discusses the Aristotelian impulse to classify with the equations classification = order and structure and waste = chaos and disorder. (p.26)

Currently reading: Gillian Whiteley – JUNK: Art and the Politics of Trash (2011, I.B.Taurus & Co)

Introduction: Cultural Bricolage and Garbology

Whiteley briefly outlines history of trash in art through the twentieth century from objet trouvé (surrealists), assemblage (mid-50s) to kitsch and folk art/culture and artist as bricoleur* from the 60s onwards. She notes that she doesn’t cover ‘junk sculpture’ – the genre associated with welded crap metal eg Richard Stankiewicz, John Chamberlian and César and focusses on work which utilises rubbish in the form of ephemeral and found materials and objects.

Quoting Vance Packard’s study The Waste Makers (1960-1), “Waste is, of course, an adjunct of luxury. Junk, trash, garbage, rubbish, refuse – whatever we call it – is dependent on economic wealth and excess production.” (p.4)

On hierarchy of material: “Sustainability and ‘thinking green’ are increasingly fashionable in the economically rich West but working with trash, creatively or in any other way, has historically , cultural and social connotations which relate to hierarchies of materials at particular times and places.” and “Everyone contributes to the domestic rubbish tip and landfill site but the processing of waste is generally left to those on the social and economical margins.” (p.5)

On the position of trash in contemporary culture: “The histories, discourse and narratives of rash are multiple – from its associations, transgression and dissent to its appropriation as souvenir, kitsch – but importantly, its histories are no longer marginal or secret. … Trash has become the trope of the turn of the twenty-first century, with, as Nicolas Bourriaud has identified, the ‘flea-market’ as a omnipresent reference.”

“Since the early nineties, the dominant visual model is close to the open-air market, the bazaar, the soul. A temporary an nomadic gathering of precarious material and product of various provenance.” – Bourriaud in Postproduction, (New York, 2002/2005, p.26)

(p.8/9) “Art’s use of trash needs to be read accordingly in diverse social, cultural and geographical contexts and situations within specific cartographies, chronologies and ethnographies.”

The questions Whitley poses from the outset are:

Is the use of trash inherently an act of dissent or is that notion historically granted?

Does the use of trash provide merely a frisson of transgression?

Has the contemporary use of garbage and assemblage become orthodoxy?

*Whiteley cites Claude Levi-Strass’s description of the Bricoleur as a “… jack of all trades or a kind of professional do-it-yourself person” – The Savage Mind (1966, p.17)

More on Noble & Webster

Vic Allen at Dean Clough sent me the following from Doug Binder’s book Full Circle:

Dean Clough Ltd. decided to simply let the studios rent-free. While the spaces were not of an especially high calibre, these were still difficult times: and the gesture remains an exceptional commitment to the arts by a commercial organisation. The studio scheme was an oft-cited model for public-funded initiatives over the next decade.

Among the early Studio Artists were an affable pair – Tim Noble and Sue Webster – who would hold parties in the Mill’s old Stable Yard. As ‘The Art Junkies’ they went on to become part of the Brit Art pack that was collected (and of course promoted) by Charles Saatchi.

“They always wanted to be part of the scene ‘down South’, and they worked at being notorious,” says Binder. “But it was an act that they put on for the television. They were well liked here. Tim was more interested in sculpture at the time – we’ve got a particularly good piece in the collection – while she was a rather fine printmaker.”

http://www.deanclough.com/

#Prettycrap twitter competition

Tim Noble & Sue Webster’s current twitter competition ‘Pretty Crap’ coincides with their new exhibition nihilistic optimistic currently showing at Blain | Southern.

This competition invites you to share your own street composition by taking a photograph of something which could be seen as rubbish, junk or waste and in 140 characters or less, say why it inspires you and how it makes an ideal street composition. It could be a forgotten, derelict building or object, or just a pile of trash.

Post your images onto the Facebook or twitter page using the hashtag #prettycrap

The competition will close on the 5th November. All entries will be judged by Tim Noble & Sue Webster in mid-November and a winner will be announced on the 16th November.

The winner will receive a signed copy of the Nihilistic Optimistic catalogue, and will have their winning image publicised online.

“Because you’re walking down the street and you see a bin bag with a banana skin on top of it, and you think, nice composition. We’re going around photographing them. There’s a rubbish bin that’s full, it’s teetering with junk and it’s a nice composition, so we came up with the term.” – Sue Webster

RULES:

There are no limitations on what you choose to photograph, the street is your oyster.

One entry per person

All entries must be received by: Friday 5th November

TERMS AND CONDITIONS– including term that states that no offensive imagery will be published– Any images deemed to be offensive or inappropriate will be removed immediately and the participant will be disqualified from the competition.

http://www.fadwebsite.com/2012/10/24/get-involved-tim-noble-sue-websters-prettycrap-competition/

Sculpture as unintentional rubbish receptacles

I attended Kasper König’s Skulptur Projekte Münster – 1977–2007 seminar at Leeds Art Gallery yesterday – an animated retrospective of Skulptur Projekte Münster by the project’s co-founder and Director of Museum Ludwig, Cologne. http://www.henry-moore.org/hmi/events/kasper-kanig-skulptur-projekte-manster

Kasper mentioned that one work in the 2007 edition of the 10-yearly was unintentionally used by the public as a receptacle for rubbish:

Guillaume Bijl – Archaeological Site (A Sorry Installation)

Right in the middle of a grassy area on the Sentruper Höhe by Lake Aa with nothing but trees and meadows around, is a milestone of cultural tourism. If the spectator steps a bit closer, he can view the archaeological excavation site from a balustrade guarding the edge of the pit. Standing there, he will see an unearthed, shingle-roofed spire topped by a weathercock. Guillaume Bijl discovered it – or rather, he invented it, as the spectator will quickly have guessed. It is an absurd, surrealist sculpture. With their steeples, the churches of Münster are still an integral part of the urban landscape. Bijl came up with the idea that “somebody could discover another church – one that had fallen victim to the passage of time, buried during the war.”

http://www.skulptur-projekte.de/kuenstler/bijl/?lang=en

The rubbish must have been quite an issue for the Skulptur Projekte Münster.

Kasper mentioned earlier in his talk that the local public in Münster were varyingly ambivalent and antagonistic to some works in the public domain, as is a common issue to consider when dealing with public art.

Does the act of throwing rubbish into Bijl’s Archaeological Site exemplify a casual disregard for the artwork? At historical sites and conservation sites, people also litter so the act is not exclusively symptomatic of public art (dis)engagement and any disregard or irreverence towards it. I think it’s quite common for some people to unthinkingly throw their litter away into any receptacle they happen to be passing at the time they want to dispose of an item, but is there a more subversive gesture at play?

Do you know of any other examples of art being used as an uninvited bin?

Municipal Waste Case Study: Calderdale

Calderdale Waste facts and figures:

• Calderdale residents produce around 78,000 tonnes of waste each year.

• In 2010 / 2011 Calderdale recycled around 41% of this waste; 32,000 tonnes.

• 17,000 tonnes is recycled via the Kerbside recycling collection service.

• A further 15,000 tonnes is recycled at Household Waste Recycling Centres and Recycling banks at various locations across the borough.

• In an average year, SITA (the Council’s waste collection contractor) make over 7.25 million visits to properties within the Authority.

• On average each property in Calderdale produces around 356 kilograms of waste per year in their wheelie bin / black sack collection – for comparison, in 2005/6 this figure was 566 kilograms per property.

• Each property within the borough also recycles 186 kilograms per year through the kerbside recycling service – again, for comparison this figure was 80 kilograms per property per year in 2005/6.

Proportion of bin contents in each waste category

Paper / card: 19.87%

Plastic film: 6.64%

Dense plastic: 9.62%

Textiles: 1.90%

Misc. combustible: 16.61%

Misc. non-combustible: 2.16%

Glass: 3.48%

Garden waste: 5.50%

Other putrescibles: 26.14%

Ferrous metal: 2.76%

Non-ferrous metal: 1.49%

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE): 1.13%

Potentially hazardous: 0.56%

Fines: 2.13%

Total: 100.00%

There are 3 national indicators that each local authority measures for household waste and municipal waste:

NI191: The amount of residual household waste per household

NI192: The percentage of household waste that is sent for reuse, recycling or composting.

NI193: The percentage of municipal waste sent to landfill

Calderdale compares N192 to the other West Yorkshire local authorities:

NI192 Percentage Household waste sent for Re-use, Recycling or Composting

Calderdale MBC: 41.07%

Wakefield MDC: 39.90%

Leeds City Council: 34.67%

Kirklees MBC: 34.01%

Bradford MDC: 33.81%

Source: http://www.calderdale.gov.uk/environment/waste/recycling/how-are-we-doing.html

Council waste types and terminology:

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW): Includes all household wastes, street litter, waste delivered to Council recycling points, Council office waste, Household Waste Recycling Site waste, and some commercial waste from shops and smaller trading estates where local authority waste collection agreements are in place.

Commercial & Industrial (C&I): Commercial – Waste arising from premises that are used wholly or mainly for trade, business, sport, recreation or entertainment. (Note – If a local authority has waste collection agreements in place it will be classed as MSW). Industrial – Waste arising from factories and industrial plants.

Construction, Demolition & Excavation (CD&E): Waste arising from construction, maintenance, and demolitions of buildings, roads and other structures.

Hazardous: Previously known also as ‘Special waste’, Hazardous wastes pose a greater risk to the environment and human health and are therefore subject to a strict control regime.