TRASH Conference
Friday 14 September 2012
University of Sussex
Tracey Potts was the keynote speaker on Your Own Personal Landfill: Stuff, Matter and the Myth of Eco-decluttering
Her presentation focus was on clutter and stuff vs matter, challenging the pseudo-biomedical self-help trend in de-cluttering.
Citing self help books/blogs such as Flylady http://www.flylady.net/ and TV programmes such as Life laundry and House Doctor, she deconstructed the environmentalism around the use of 12 step / rehab / addiction terminology and self-proclamined “light-green” environmentalists
Theories of matter out of place (Mary Douglas), reverse living (Henry Le Fevre) and atrocious uselessness (Jean Baudrillard) were woven together.
From the outset she posed the question; How do we contain trash studies to talk about it without falsely tidying it up?
On stuff vs matter, she cited Disney/Pixar’s Wall E animation, Fraggle Rock and The Wombles, comparing volumetric stuff with “thing-power” matter that exceeds the status of objects, manifets traces of independence and becomes other (anthropomorphisation).
In her conclusion she cited Jane Bennett on “vital materialsm is a netter way of thinking about ecology rather than environmentalism.”
I was in the Dealing with Debris morning panel with speakers Bel Deering, Chris Lloyd and Amy Carson.
Bel Deering presented a paper on Mortal Remains: the perils, pitfalls and pleasures of studying rubbish in a graveyard setting on her research into rubbish left in graveyards. Handing around evidence bags with samples of rubbish she had retrieved from graveyards largely disused as the orgiinal purpose but re-appropriated as places for sleep, “sex, drugs and rock n roll.”
Chris Lloyd presented paper on Hurricane Katrina and the South’s disposable (trashy) bodies making the argument that a racial politics had resulted in black bodies of Hurricane Katrina being considered as trash amongst the debris of the devastation.
Amy Carson presented a paper on The deconstruction of menstruation – with a focus on the ‘feminine-hygiene’ culture in the West focussing on her research into perceptions of menstruation as “dirty” and urging people to talk about menstruation more as a tactic to negate the taboo.
I was speaking in the afternoon panel Memory and Materialism with Natacha Chevalier and Jeannie Driver.
My paper was on the Museum of Contemporary Rubbish, discussing the inspirations, methodologies, outcomes and future plans of the project.
Natacha Chevalier presented a paper on When waste was trash: The thrifty 30s and 40s looking at the “make do and mend” thriftiness of the era.
Jeannie Driver presented a paper on her art practice dealing with waste materials, predominantly waste paper, in From SPIKE IT to HARD GRAPH: The Waste Remains. It was great to hear Jeannie talk about her work which in the presented works deals with discarded paper from various offices and shredded paper on mass. http://jeanniedriver.com/
Finally the plenary panel (Re)making the Metropolis had four speakers; Francisco Calafate-Faria, Arpad Boczen, Claire Reddleman, Michael Ezban. Francisco, Arpad and Michael had each presented work in the TRASH Art Exhibition last night so this was a great opportunity to hear more about their work.
Francisco presented a paper The ‘Museum of Rubbish’ in Curitiba: Short-Cycling or Line of Flight? on his research visit to Brazil. The Museum of Rubbish is a large collection of items rescued from landfill by works at a recycling plant in Curitiba. The items are roughly categorised into stacks of radios, clocks, phones, a huge wall of discarded photographs and much more.
Arpad Boczen presented a paper on Sweet Urban Stink in our Ears discussing his music made from “found” urban sound.
Claire Reddleman’s paper “Modern and contemporary route-finding”: reactivating dead labour as spheres of appearance in ‘Pennine Street 2012′ presented her work Pennine Street 2012 – a Olympic twinning project of the Olympic High Street and the Pennine Way.
Michael Ezban’s paper The Trash Heap of History presented his research on the “feral monument” Monte Testaccio in Rome – a Roman trash dump comprised of methodological broken and stacked clay vessels (amphorae) used in the transportation of olive oil, described as a “hill of receipts” due to the bureaucratic inscriptions of name of producer, production and inspection dates.
TRASH Conference was a varied and fascinating collection of papers from post-graduate researchers in the broad field of trash. Further to the individual presentations themselves, it was also interesting to see how trash studies is found within various post-graduate disciplines.
Many thanks to the organisers!
