the
everyday #1 trash
Contemporary Society and Its Gifts
Editor’s choice
Michael Koptev as the voice of torn for pieces Donbass
studying the everyday life ur ire o iss nna m ’t estio n Do Qu 17 ash p. r T
ART & CULTURE
08 Misha Koptev and the Orchid Theater by Castor Troy 11 The Aesthetics of Trash by David Banash and John De Gregorio 15
Trash Aesthetics and the Sublime: Strategies for Visualiz ing the Unrepresentable by Emit Snake-Beings
SOCIOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
04 Contemporary Society and Its Gifts by Natasha Schastneva 05
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Marcel Mauss: The Gift. A Criti cal Review by Catherine Lucas
The EVERYDAY Magazine VOLUME 1
FROM THE EDITOR: Our magazine deals with sociological approach to everyday life. Some articles are more of theoretical character whilst others bring insight into everyday practices and make us reflect on the ordinary things we got used to. This isssue is devoted to the different aspects of trash. It is treated both from ecological (political) and aesthetical (artistic) ways. Since waste and recycling have particular ethics on what is to be recycled (read - destroyed) and what can be given to someone else (read - donated), ties between people and their decisions seem to be very important. We made a decision to name the current issue as “Trash. Contemporary Society and Its Gifts“.
NATASHA SCHASTNEVA Editor-In-Chief n.schastneva@theeveryday.se CATHERINE LUCAS Co-Editor c.lucas@theeveryday.se
CONTRIBUTOR PHOTOGRAPHERS EMIT SNAKE-BEINGS MICHAEL KOPTEV NATASHA SCHASTNEVA FRONT COVER NATASHA SCHASTNEVA
VISIT US AT EVERYDAYONLINE.COM
INSTAGRAM.COM/ EVERYDAYONLINE FACEBOOK.COM/ EVERYDAYONLINE
All rights belong to the authors and initial media resources 3
CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY AND ITS GIFTS TEXT&PHOTO: NATASHA SCHASTNEVA
O
nce my friend and I came to Mellringe recycling centre. We brought an old wooden fence to be recycled. When we looked into one of the cans we were more than surprised: the can was filled with brand new rugs, plenty of DVD’s, two armchairs in pretty good condition, etc. We were already sitting on the can’s edge deciding who was to jump in to get the stuff when one of the workers came by and said he was to report to police if we stole anything. If we took ! We were dazed. Who knew that taking anything out of the trash was a crime?! I could not stop thinking about the incident: how can picking up trash and bringing it home be a crime?! In a few days I came back to Mellringe recycling centre with the camera and questions needed to be answered. People desiring to get rid of certain things have at least two options — to donate them or to de4
Workers of Mellringe recycling centre
stroy them. Since the moment something is put into the can it becomes a property of the Kommun and it is sentenced to be destroyed. The Kommun respects citizens’ choice and does its best to guard all those things on their way towards recycling. No one can take anything out of the cans. All those new rugs,
DVD’s with cartoons, bikes, sofas, microwaves are to be recycled according to the will of their owners. People are coming by cars filled with lots of things. Mostly not broken and still working. There are about 400 cars coming by every day to this centre. And a noteworthy thing is that not so many people donate their things. One of the visitors said that once he donated his clothes and then found out that a second-hand store employee was wearing them. He became totally disappointed in charity since that day. In faraway 1950s Marcel Mauss, a French anthropologist and sociologist, worked on the theory of gift and exchange practices (see The Gift. Forms and Functions of the Exchange in Archaic Societies). Traditional (“primitive”) societies endowed and treated gift-giving and exchange with mythological, mystical, personal aspects as well they were also social, political, and power tools within the society itself. The gift was more than a commodity. Gift-giving practices involved the obligation to give gifts (aspects of generosity and gaining respect), the obligation to take the gifts (accepting of generosity, showing respect), and the obligation to give gifts in return (demonstrating equivalency of honor). Gift was treated more than an object or someone’s property but a tool for changing social reality. Socio-political development and capitalist processes of alienation modified the notion of the gift (nowadays called a ‘donation’, obviously hierarchal term). The “giver” is not supposed to meet the ‘given’. This has become the rule of the giver’s comfort zone safety. Thus exchange practices as well as their social connotations have been dramatically modified.
Marcel Mauss: The Gift A Critical Review TEXT: CATHERINE LUCAS PHOTO: NATASHA SCHASTNEVA “The Gift” has encountered many criticisms where certain hypothesises appear to conflict with contemporary practices. Although focused on archaic societies, I will endeavour to show throughout the essay in a balanced manner, how we can use Mauss’ ideas in an enduring way when looking at certain aspects of economical and gift ex-
One of the customers of Mellringe recycling centre
So, what makes you, a law-abiding citizen sharing eco views, to destroy things someone is in need? Is it fear of the someone making profit out of the things you do not need any more? The things you sentence to destruction? Or is it envy? Because you yourself could not make this profit?
change systems in contemporary anthropology. In order to begin to explore these three areas, we must first understand the ‘Potlatch’, the system through which gifts are exchanged, encompassing the acts of giving, receiving and most importantly in the text, the way they are reciprocated. As Mauss has it: “The potlatch itself, so typical a phenomenon, and at the same time so characteristic of these tribes, [Melanesian and Polynesian] is none other than the system of gifts exchanged.” (Mauss, edited in 2001, p.45) Particularly focusing on the Polynesians, Mauss shows us how from the development of this “whole system of gifts and this form of exchange” (ibid, p.26) we can trace societal meanings of generosity and responsibility of wealth. Generosity is the focus of the first part of the essay, and from this we look at concepts of honour. Finally, we can engage with contemporary criticisms to challenge 5
Customers of Mellringe recycling centre
theories surrounding the notions of ‘free’ gifts.
The Obligation to Reciprocate: Generosity and Greed
given and why. Gifts of too great a value, in the wrong context, may denote ill feeling towards the recipient of the object or service rendered. It shows a vulgar display of wealth intended to ‘flatten’ the recipient, and implies a challenge of further reciprocal wealth. This display is very different to generosity of given wealth. It is a display intended to challenge rivals. Mauss explores the fear of being ‘beaten’ by superior gifts in his initial exploration of the Potlatch and its three main obligations, “to give, to receive, to reciprocate,” by focusing on the element of prestige acquired by giving a gift of high value. It is the issue of being obligated to accept a gift you fear being unable to match in reciprocation that is the focus here. As Mauss asserts: “The obligation to accept is no less constraining. One has no right to refuse to attend the potlatch. To act in this way is to show that one is afraid of having to reciprocate, to fear being “flattened”… to admit oneself beaten in advance…”(Ibid p.52) To be ‘beaten’ by a gift is to show inferior wealth, and also inferior generosity by failure of appropriate reciprocation. Mauss uses direct and firm language when expressing this idea, further cementing its importance in the theory. The physicality of the language – the notion of being ‘flattened,’ implies a physical presence of this shame on the beaten party, and the resultant sore effect on their societal standing.
Mauss explores the obligations on us to give gifts and more importantly to reciprocate that which is given – in either equal or greater value than that which was received. In each given example of the practices and rituals of gift giving in a diverse variety of societies, (Hindu, Germanic, Roman, etc.) although the practice of gift exchange and the reasons behind them may differ, Mauss consistently impresses on us the constant re-encountering of the obligation to reciprocate gifts. The value of the returning gift is essential to maintaining alliances between parties and partial relations; giving too much may incur as much offence to the recipient as returning goods or services with too little value. Out of the obligation to give gifts, one can further explore the symbolic nature of generosity. Looking at wedding gifts in Germanic societies, Mauss gives a keen example of this symbolism by looking at the meaning behind the giving tradition: “In a few places the generosity of these gifts is proof of the fertility of the young couple.” (Mauss, 2001 ed. p.78) Generosity versus greed is an integral theme to the underlying moral intention inherent in gift exchange. A recurring notion is that “the recipient puts himself in a position of dependence vis-à-vis the do- Honour and Wealth nor” (ibid p.76) and by this notion Mauss illustrates Gregory cites Mauss’ influence on anthrothe intricate moral balance inherent in gift exchange. If we view the gift exchange as a moral con- pological interpretation of “competitive gift extract there must be moral implications to how much is change systems” in his essay on ‘gift exchange …in 6
contemporary Papua’ (Gregory, 1980) in which he explores the symbolic ‘destruction of wealth’ in ritual gift offerings to gods as well as other men, and the idea that wealth that is distributed generously will be revisited on them. He suggests that better than the giving of wealth to other men, the giving of it to gods enforces a faith in the power of the gift exchange and the power of the obligation to reciprocate the gift, even if it is not in a material sense. He looks to wealth gathered by the Church and by charitable organisations, and the faith from the benefactor that these gifts will be used in a manner befitting the sacrifice. In practice, he sees that monetary wealth in particular is used for many other uses by the beneficiary than that which it was intended. It is interesting to note that this essay looking at a contemporary although to some extent tribal society (village societies in Papua New Guin
tion of honour acquired or maintained through generous giving is the driving force between relations with other groups, just as it is in the contemporary society Gregory explores. Giving wealth is a honourable institution, but further to this what we can take from Gregory’s use of Mauss is that giving without a full sense of how the wealth will be used (here we may read: monetary wealth,) is more honourable still.
Conclusion “It is common knowledge that men present themselves publicly by the conspicuous presentation if gifts. Generous contributions to a charity have always been a source of prestige in the United States… especially…when such gestures are made by individuals rather than corporations…” says Schwartz (1967) The social standing created through gift exchange is a key element of Mauss’ dialogue and as we
Middle class citizens greeting someone
ea) that still carries rituals as a part of its symbolic nature, does no longer fully align with the ideologies surrounding generosity and greed that Mauss perceives in archaic societies, particularly in Melanesia and Polynesia, which are noted influences in how Gregory approaches his subject. Mauss refers to both Polynesian and Melanesian archaic societies where he addresses these questions of “honour and credit” (Mauss, 2001 ed. p.42) and its importance in the ‘system’ the gift and the reciprocated gifts are generated through. As symbols of social standing, Mauss argues that that which is exchanged serves “to reflect somewhat directly the manner in which the subgroups…feel that they are everything to one another.” (Ibid, pp.42-3.) The no-
have explored, the influence of these theories continue to exert their authority on anthropologists and sociologists today. However, few have attempted the feat achieved by Mauss of encompassing so many societies and their rituals into one area of social exchange. The elements of this discourse discussed in this essay do, I feel, review the key areas inherent in studying concepts of ‘the gift.’ As Mauss himself concludes, this study encompasses “…science of customs [and]…moral conclusions,” where the gift serves as a tool to analyse the use of “wealth amassed and then redistributed,” and how these exchanges can be used to theorise the symbolism of gifts, behind their practical outcomes of “mutual respect and reciprocating generosity.” 7
MICHAEL KOPTEV & THE ORCHID THEATER TEXT: CASTOR TROY PHOTO: SOCIAL MEDIA ichael Koptev is a 42 year old designer from Lugansk (Ukrainian city that is on the bottom of the rating of Ukrainian cities due to statistics about unemployment, drugs, alcohol, crimes etc.). Misha is one of those people not having any job, money, stability. He doesn’t know how to sew, he didn’t study design or fashion, he knows no fashion news from around the world, watches no TV, Internet, Magazines. In 1993 Misha Koptev created (not officially grounded by papers) Theatre of Provocative Fashion “Orchid”,
M
Michael Koptev. A Lugansk designer
All the people on the pictures have no money, they drink alcohol really hard making provocative fashion shows in some crappy local bars, working for 1 bottle of vodka and some small amount of money. Misha himself is a genius born in Ukrainian ghetto, his clothes represent Ukrainian lifestyle to some extent since that time the entrance fee is not more than 0.6 euro for a person to come and watch the show. The shooting took place partly in the flat of his mother, in one room of which he keeps his clothes. All the outfits are just on the floor mixed up with garbage, bugs, dirt, boxes, bones of dead animals he found on the street and uses for his collections. He rarely makes shows now, big part of his clothes is stolen by “models” (as some of them were imprisoned before, some are pregnant, some are sick, or just have no money to live decently). He buys clothes at flea markets, cuts some parts with the scissors, puts the crystals and strasses on, do make-up and old school body art. In his city he is a truly scandalous personality, he says “If I come to police and say I am Misha Koptev they put me into prison without explaining the crime. The celebrity, which had already been recognized before the war as one of the main freaks of Luhansk, scandalous fashion and organizator of the sensational “shows of the extreme fashion” of the theatre “Orchid”. 8
One of the models. Shooting in Michael’s flat
Having lived for 25 years in Luhansk, I’ve heard a lot about his “fashion shows”, taken place in HC of railroad, seen some photos, but personally I prefered not to visit them. It was not because I didn’t want it, it was curious enough, but consciousness
One of the shows in Lugansk Culture House
of Luhansk dweller had the associations with “total facepalm” in spite of a little number of prejudices. A lot of people from Donbass, Crimea and other Ukraine had to build once again the paradigm of life values, once again to divide anger from kindness, reconstruct destiny. So, when I knew that legendary Mike Koptev, stayed to live in occupied by “LPR” Luhansk, is going to visit the capital, I decided that I must go on this event.
liberately careless strokes of lipstick, dark shadows and bright blush, plenty of dark shades. Facial expressions are stressed meaningless missing. Such appearance of the girls pushed me to compare all this show with Donbass, from where couturier with his retinue had come themselves. Meanwhile, the soundtrack was becoming more horrible and “trash”. Michael Koptev once again appeared on the stage first after the music pause, organized for models to re-dress in the new toilets. Michael was shirtless below, he had cossack cap on his head and his hand was gripping an opened bottle of vodka. The costumes of the mannequins became more bright and cheerful, bright shoes with high heels also appeared on them. Koptev had cheerful manner of behave too, he began to come closer to the spectators and tried to clink glasses with them by his bottle, if somebody was holding the plastic cup with coffee. The mannered young man with expressive make-up in tights and biker jacket also appeared on the stage. The crosses and domes became to appear less. Defile has been continuing under the grim cacophony with lots of mids. At the end of performance maestro himself and models were
Michael Koptev as the voice of torn for pieces Donbass
It took place in “School of Kiyv Bienalle” on Lviv square, where a few hundreds of spectators gathered. They wished to see this living legend by their own eyes. Koptev with some of his models were drunk enough, which was in the harmonic conception of the event. As I could draw the conclusion, the main topics of the current performance were Christian faith and “folk”: there were domes with crosses on the backs of the models, symbols of redemption were dazzling on the wrists, backs and sometimes on the other parts of the bodies. The mannequins in clothes and with haircuts, which could be called correctly torn for pieces came out on the podium under the dark and twilight music. Make-up was corresponding: de-
One of the models at home photosession
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passing by the stage in the new toilets. Finally they dragged a huge, related somehow of thin “Are love and joy possible on the ruins?” branches cross. It was left in the center of the podium. The show seemed too extravagant But Koptev is asking questions: if love and for a lot of visitors with I talked later. But also there joy are possible on the ruins? What is the limits of were such people who frankly wondered the show. forgiveness and compassion? What is the price for “Dear Kyiv people, I love all of you! The prob- redemption? And finally who will win – resentment, lem is that I love you more than you love me”, claimed revenge and destruction, or perhaps an attempt to protagonist from the stage at last. As for me, Michael understand and forgive each other. Do we ready Koptev has shown that he’s called the best trash-cou- for such a questions? Do we ready to ask them to ture of Ukraine and all post-Soviet space by right. He ourselves? The policy is absent in this play. There is squeezed the story last year and a half in hour and a nor Putin, nor Poroshenko, nor State Dept. with all
Two models at home photosession
half. It is the history of suffering, humiliation, violence and attempt to learn to live and rejoice once again, in spite of everything. At last I saw the redemptive nature of what is happening, which was symbolized by cross, woven from thin branches of human lives, our lives. He showed us ourselves under the samples from “Ave Maria” and monstrous guitar riffs, we were confused, lost and almost lost hope. All of us were equal. This artist saw happening in this way and he decided to shout about it in everyone’s hearing. A lot of people with whom I discussed the creativity of Koptev said that they are not ready to accept it. Maybe we are not ready for a lot of things, maybe we were not ready in time? 10
its reptiloids. Koptev is interest only in people: those who are there and those who are here. Only people and their the price of their redemption, which has been already paid by somebody and somebody is only waiting for such reckoning. I’m not around agree with Koptev, but if I correctly understood what he wanted to say, I appreciate his point of view as an artist. The separate respect for him is that he came to us from the occupied Luhansk and really it is unknown how his fact of performance in the capital of Ukraine will be judged on his Motherland. The civil courage and bravery are needed for this, however also they needed to be openly gay and scandalous celebrity in the capital of “Lugansk republic”.
THE AESTHETICS OF TRASH TEXT&PHOTO: DAVID BANASH & JOHN DE GREGORIO
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n contemporary consumer cultures, it is an affective orientation towards objects that pulls consumers into the future. As Lauren Berlant writes, “[w]hen we talk about an object of desire, we are really talking about a cluster of promises we want someone or something to make possible for us”. Through objects, we pursue the promises of an ever-elusive happiness. Theorists like Ahmed and Berlant focus largely on the fantasy objects of the good life— the family, the lover, the child, the job, but also on all those objects that are better described as stuff: a house, a new car, an appliance, a shirt, a pair of shoes, a gun, a toy, a phone, a bottle of water—that whole object world that we assemble into a lifestyle. Those concrete objects, and their inevitable fates as trash, are under scrutiny in this special issue
of NANO. In this issue we will ask, what happens when those concrete objects that promised us a future are suddenly found to be empty in our present? What happens when objects that promised us a future are cast away and forgotten as we reach towards some new, seemingly better promise? The problem, of course, is that these failed, empty objects do not disappear. More and more fabricated from plastics, the objects of our everyday desires persist eternally. They are essentially immortal, and like zombies, have a way of leaving their graves and coming back to haunt us. There is a terrifying dimension to this that
For the consumers of global North, the great hope seems to be recycling.
seems to put us in touch with the death-drive at the heart of capitalism, in which consumers are enjoined to the endless repetition of buying objects that can never produce the wholeness they promise. Once the newly bought objects are found empty, the cycle continues. Vance Packard offers one of the best descriptions ever written about the emergence of consumer culture, The Waste Makers. Writing in 1960, he imagines what sounds like Wal-Mart: “a Titanic push-button supermart built to simulate a fairyland” that includes “receptacles where the people can dispose of the old-fashioned products they bought on a previous trip”. For the consumers of the global North, the great hope seems to be recycling. But thus far, recycling is doing almost nothing. While public relations campaigns are relentless, the sheer amount of plastics being produced overwhelm any attempt to systematically capture and reuse 11
develop a mode of thought capable of “accepting waste as such... the inertia of rotten material that serves no purpose”. The problem of waste, as told in books from Packard’s The Waste Makers to Don DeLillo’s Underworld, is the perverse thrill inspired by the mountains of trash, overflowing in landfills, so easily turned into some image of use or beauty. Perhaps the real problem is just this: look at how well all that waste works for us, ceasing to be waste at all as it labors to prop up “Still 2 from Plastic Paradise.” Sunshine, 2013. June 2015. Author’s screenshot. our utopian fantasies of redemption. Waste as value is the fantasy them. In 2012, the US alone proat the heart of most popular culduced 32 million tons of plastic “The idea of ‘recycling’ ture which takes up these object waste, and only 9% of that was worlds of trash, waste, and refuse. recycled (EPA). Tanya Leal Soto’s involves the utopia of a In shows like Antiques Roadshow, recent documentary, Plastic Par- self-enclosed circle...“ the fantasy is that what appears adise: The Great Pacific Garbage to be junk, some useless leftovers Patch, makes the fantasies of recycling clear as fantasies. In the sible, and perhaps there is even of the past, will almost always middle of the ocean, the Great some dull comfort in these almost be revealed to hold a profound Pacific Garbage Patch is a swirl- infinite but abject accumulations. exchange value that will give it ing vortex of ineradicable plastic. The unthinking, stubborn meaning, and each segment of But it is all but impossible to see passivity of the object reflects back the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. to us the feeling that at least we from the dadaists Go there on a boat, and it looks are not that. These old, empty oblike blue seas as far as the eye jects will try to sink us, but some- to conceptualists... can see. One has to cut open the how they really make us swim, Artists often work with guts of marine birds to under- demonstrating our very human trash stand the scale, and that simply and yet almost incomprehensible doesn’t make for good television. productivity and drive. We might Turning on the TV today, well grasp this as an ultimate kind the show ends with the sparkling one is presented with an infinite of denial of all this excess as waste. price displayed underneath the spectacle of objects: Antiques It is like the old Woody Allen joke seemingly ordinary object—now Roadshow, American Pickers, Pawn from Annie Hall. Driving around not waste at all but literally a Stars, and of course all the shows Hollywood, Annie comments glowing idea of exchange value. From corporate propaabout hoarders. These shows that everything is so clean com- present the obverse of the adver- pared to New York. Alvie replies: ganda to government public sertisements where objects promise “That’s because they don’t throw vice announcements, the idea of us a future, for in these shows their garbage away. They turn recycling is that we can consume about trash, people seem to be all it into television shows” (Allen). without being swamped in waste, but drowning under ever growing Slavoj Žižek writes a pivotal as if it would only take separating mountains of leftovers, surfing a critique of our dreams of recycling: the glass from the paper to make sea of numberless objects, their “The idea of ‘recycling’ involves consumer capitalism sustainable. packaging, and all the excesses of the utopia of a self-enclosed cir- In Underworld, Don DeLillo writes: DeLillo’s vision captures consumer culture that haunt our cle in which all waste, all useless this fantasy of recycling, that imaginations. This should be a be- remainder is sublated: nothing wildering spectacle, and yet some- gets lost, all trash is reused”. For somehow the equation of conhow it is watchable, comprehen- Žižek, the real ecologist would sumption could be perfectly bal12
anced without the useless remainder. If television gives us the object redeemed by exchange value and recycling gives us the hope of an impossibly useful world, doesn’t art translate trash into beauty? Artists from the dadaists to today’s conceptualists often work with trash. Massimiliano Gioni writes about collage, that fundamental technique of engaging with
confers on the perceiver the gift of life, so the perceiver confers on the beautiful being the gift of life. Each “welcomes” the other: each—to return to the word’s original meaning—“comes in accordance with [the] other’s will.” How beautifully the equations balance with no unusable leftovers! Isn’t this exactly the disavowal suggested by Žižek’s con-
“Still from Annie Hall.” United Artists, 1977. June 2015. Author’s screenshot
the leftover objects of consumption: “[c]ollage is a dirty medium, infected as it is by waste. It appropriates residues and leftovers, trafficking with what is deemed to be valueless”. But of course, all of that “valueless” waste will work for us again as sense and beauty, the impossible equation again perfectly balancing: “it was an attempt to make sense of the world, to structure it, while still preserving its absurdly cacophonic, at times, sublime multiplicity”. In collage, all the waste is redeemed in a sense, just as the photographs of Vik Muniz or Edward Burtynsky take the waste we cannot recycle but make it so impossibly beautiful that it is redeemed, doing the thing that beauty always does: Beauty is, then, a compact, or contract between the beautiful being (a person or thing) and the perceiver. As the beautiful being
a fascinating survey of the re-use of trash in contemporary art, Boldrick explores the intentional destruction of trash; she writes, “[m] any artists incorporate destructive acts into their practice in order to address the ephemerality of the material world, but they also do it […] to retain a sense of the object’s original value and purpose.” Rejecting the popular celebration of art practices that incorporate or recycle waste in order to create something other than trash, Boldrick suggests that the acknowledgment of trash as itself, in its ephemerality and expendability, presents a more compelling alternative for the work of art. Charmaine Eddy, in “Trash and Aesthetics in the Hoard,” deftly reads two reality television series, Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive, in terms of the alternate semiologies of the object provided by “thing theory.” In these shows, hoarding is framed as a psychopathology that is cured by applying the evaluative measures of consumer capitalism to the hoarder’s objects, classifying them as trash. However, Eddy argues that the therapeutic narrative of both shows is under-
cept of waste as an absolute uselessness that cannot be redeemed? Can we learn to think waste as waste? In “Trash as Trash as Art: Reflections on the PreserCan we learn to think waste as waste? vation and Destruction of Waste in Artistic Practice,” Stacy Boldrick mined by a potentially disruptive reflects on her participation in discourse: uncontainable within artist Michael Landy’s 2012 Work- the economic logic of the curative shop on Destruction in order to process, the many moments in reconceptualize the creative reuse which the camera focuses on the of discarded objects in contempo- singular object in the hoarder’s rary art practices. Boldrick discuss- hand give voice to an object-ories artistic acts of destruction that ented ontology that threatens to challenge the material conditions “insert a wedge into the evaluof discarded objects through sev- ative object hierarchy that suberal examples of art as trash, cul- tends consumption.” Ultimately, minating in a poignant reflection Eddy concludes that “resisting on her creation of a self-destroying homogenizing the differences of sculpture in Landy’s Workshop. In objects” and “disrupting moral 13
definition[s] of consumption” may provide a basis for addressing “the larger social and environmental problems we now face as a result of the restrictive human-centered aesthetics in which objects have historically been placed.” Co-authors Mél Hogan and Andrea Zeffiro, in “Out of Site & Out of Mind: Speculative Historiographies of Techno trash,” articulate a theoretical framework for a historiographic approach to what they term “techno trash,” the disuse and disposal of common tech devices, primarily phones, tablets, and laptops. The authors argue that capitalist markets encourage the built-in obsolescence of new gadgets, resulting in a corresponding ecological impact that is largely concentrated in developing nations. Designed to be trashed, new tech devices are produced, consumed, and discarded at an alarming rate, necessitating an open, non-commercial space for tech users to document and reflect on their experiences
with techno-trash. Hogan and Zeffiro operate just such a space, their Thinking about waste withparticipatory project out the comforting fictions technotrash.org, which they describe as “a re- of perfect recycling is more pository for narrative important than ever as globreflection and photo al consumerism grows ever documentation, detailing modes of acquisition, In “Drawing a Transductive patterns of use, and the limitations of options when deal- Ecosophy in Process: Technologing with technological disposal.” ical Arts, Residual Matter, AssociThe authors suggest that their ated Milieus,” artist Gisèle Trudel communal project enables partic- explicates a tetralogy of perforipants to tell their techno-trash mative artworks on waste matter stories, which thus “operates as produced by Ælab, an art research a framework for making sense unit co-founded by Trudel and out of the world” and functions collaborator Stéphane Claude. as “a strategy for transforming Trudel rethinks the role of the huprivate into public meanings.” man in ecology through the con In “Notes on Cool: The cept of ecosophy, interweaving Temporal Politics of Friendly Mon- mental, social, and environmental sters and the E-waste Aesthetic,” ecologies, which she describes as Sabine LeBel examines what she “a theory of the relations of subterms the “E-waste aesthetic,” pri- jectivity to a situation and to life, marily an aesthetics of scale, as it [which] proves fruitful and releis invoked in the sculpture WEEE vant for political change,” in which and the film WALL-E. LeBel argues “the individual is not isolated that both sculpture and film ad- from the changes and crises that dress E-waste as a crisis of space, s/he also takes part in.” Trudel’s representing the sheer enormity unique combination of academic and volume of tech garbage, while research and artistic creation inignoring the temporal implica- stantiates a transdisciplinary aestions of such devastating waste. thetic, emerging from an ecology For LeBel, built-in obsolescence, of practices that brings together environmental toxicity, and the humans, non-humans, and residredistribution of hazardous waste ual matter in order to increase from rich to poor countries are mindfulness of their mutual imlong-term problems insufficiently plication in ecological processes. Thinking about waste withaddressed by current approach- es to E-waste management. Ex- out the comforting fictions of pertending from her exploration of fect recycling is more important the E-waste aesthetic and her than ever as global consumerism critique of spatial approaches to grows ever larger. As the contribudigital-age waste, LeBel suggests tors to this issue demonstrate, artthat WEEE and WALL-E reproduce ists, writers, activists and academan affectless, individualist, con- ics are trying to find new, inventive, sumerist aesthetic of the “cool” and compelling frames to chalthat has emerged online, but “can lenge us to acknowledge waste. be connected not only to the culEmit Snake-Beings. NSTRA SNRA de las Bombillas (our lady of the lightbulbs - ture of information, but also to Coin operated Shrine) the corporatization of culture.”
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TRASH AESTHETICS AND THE SUBLIME: Strategies for Visualizing the Unrepresentable
TEXT&PHOTO: EMIT SNAKE-BEINGS mand of our attention. The failure of machines can also be an intentional consequence of industry, such as the kind of in-built redundancy that drives the production and sale of new products, as discussed in Vance Packard’s book The Waste Makers or Slavoj Žižek’s commentary in Astra Taylor’s 2008 documentary Examined Life. While, in this sense, trash is intentional, there is also something about trash which has moved beyond function and human purpose: this is the link between trash and the realm of the sublime that I wish to explore in this essay. Thus, the problem: how do we experience and represent what appears to be a sublime realm outside of technological mediation and devoid of human intention? How do we visualize the sublime world of Emit Snake-beings ‘Death of an Orchestra’ still trash and the failure of machines while retaining our codependency with technoliving in a technology-dependent society, it seems ogy as a means of visualization? Is there a way to inevitable that our vision of the world is mediat- engage with the paradox of trash, to represent the ed and extended through our interactions with unrepresentable without changing it into sometechnology. We often realize the extent of technolog- thing else? For it seems we can only visualize trash ical mediation when our machines cease to function once it has been transformed into something correctly. When a machine fails, we leave the predict- that is more useful in the generation of meaning. Language is often seen as a machine of repreably functioning world and enter into another realm. Think of the primitive magic of lighting candles during sentation, which, like technology, has its constant upa power cut, where there is the potential of experi- grades, failures, and redundant forms. When words encing something sublime—something beyond the fail to describe, we have what Immanuel Kant calls order and structure that technology imposes on us. the feeling of the sublime (Observations on the Feel On the other hand, when technology breaks ing of the Beautiful and Sublime 1764): an anomaly, it is also an opportunity to experience a myriad of or rupture in the power of language to encapsulate emotions such as frustration, rage, loss, or boredom. the world, an experience that cannot be placed withIn the face of technological failure, our ingrained re- in an overriding system of representation or visualsponse is to obtain a replacement, an upgrade, that ization. Kant links the feeling of the sublime with the promises greater freedom and a new way of visual- power of the natural landscape to evoke feelings that izing the world. The old piece of technology turns language fails to represent, and, as such, the sublime to trash and falls silently and invisibly from our con- is a failure of language to represent something outsciousness, as new technological vistas take com- side of the systems of human intention. For Kant, the 15
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sublime landscape is un-categorizable, falling between known emotions, such as pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, and defying a logical understanding of the world. In this essay, the sublime is linked to a trash aesthetic and is evoked through representations of a landscape made from refuse and garbage. The link between the sublime and trash is suggested in John Scanlan’s book On Garbage when he writes: “[g] arbage does not strictly refer to an object, but is a jumble of inexactness [...] it seems to lack conventional referents […] garbage is the remainder of the symbolic order proper” (15-16). For Scanlan it appears that trash is a sublime object that exists outside of language, lacking in the “conventional referents” of the “symbolic order” we call language. While there is a strong argument that the production of trash is a necessary part of industrial and economic progress, such as the intentional redundancy and short life resulting from constant upgrades of technological products, there is also the feeling of a deep transformation that happens to technology when it becomes trash. Scanlan’s comments suggest that the transformation of technology to trash signifies a departure from human-intentional systems: trash is the chaotic residue of human systems that remains after order has been removed. In this sense, trash is the forgotten error of a broken machine excluded from the new languages of technology: a part of the visualizing system that has been removed from our sight. When trash is emancipated from contrived function and linguistic specificity, it inherits qualities of the sublime—a lack of form, a post-consumer mystique, a loss of language. Trash begins to exist outside of our command; it acquires a limitlessness that transcends its original design. For me, a trash aesthetic is something that engages with the failure of machines and seeks out the sublime beauty of accidental errors, the unintentional, and the willfully excluded. A trash aesthet 16
Emit Snake-Beings. Empty Billboard #17
ic can also be a way of reclaiming the unrepresented objects that have been discarded, turning them into statements about the inbuilt redundancy of technology and, on a larger scale, the unsustainable path of our current global trajectories. If technology enables us to visualize the world, then the materials of trashed technology are the things we want to un-visualize or make disappear. One strategy of trash aesthetics could be to engage in the breaking down of the dichotomy between the visualizing ability of technology and the actual material objects of trash. Since (in most scenarios) garbage is the invisible material excluded from our technological systems—the errors and accidents that we do not want to see—the trash aesthetic is an engagement with something outside of the systems that humans use to define their world. Therefore, a trash aesthetic works with nonhuman systems that may be used to explore our world; such an aesthetic does so by breaking down the dichotomy between human and material and displacing the human as the central figure of intention or agency within visualized landscapes. As the following examples (from the author’s private collection) illustrate, an individual human artist is not necessarily central in the construction of works that engage in a trash aesthetic.
Will It Shred?
The Badass PRI-MAX Industrial Shredder Says ‘Yes’
WHAT DO YOU THINK? YES NO TRASH URSELF OTHER:
Cut out and send us your answers to: The Everyday Ltd. Syster Syrenas väg 5 981 07 Abisko
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CC Natasha Schastneva, 2015
d gne i s de hed ras t e o b