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April 21, 2010
I'm taking photos of urban waste --- the emptied out, the used up, the broken, the outgrown, the obsolete; the dispossessed, the lost, the left behind, the rubbish, the mass produced throwaway. Our commodity culture is now a throwaway world and, if the remnant embodies a mode of ‘critical memory’ as Walter Benjamin claimed, then we have an aesthetics of decay.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, trolley+ rubbish, Port Adelaide, 2009
Trash is especially evident with old technology. Not many of us would bother to repair a seriously malfunctioning television these days. If it was under warranty, we would return it; if not, it’s probably trash like old computers. Yet there was a time when television sets were taken to a shop to be repaired.
A shift in our technological economy that favors replacement over repair explains some part of technological trash. It is now trash because changes in everything to which it must connect have made it unusable, especially with the shift from analogue to digital television.They become unusable.
Same with digital cameras. Mechanical analogue cameras continue to be repaired. Digital cameras, like mobile phones are, become throwaways.They don't need to be malfunctioning, failed or burnt-out. They are obsolete.
Trash belongs with garbage, junk, rubbish, refuse, debris, and waste. ‘Trash’ refers to the inorganic (thus distinct from ‘garbage’) and the useless (thus different from ‘junk’) which is unwanted but usable) residue of global capitalism. It becomes trash the moment a person can no longer use it. What are you supposed to do with the paper cup your french fries come in after you have eaten?
Take it home and photograph it in the studio with an expensive Rolleiflex SLR camera and film?
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If both our habits and engagement with our habitat constitute an embodied ethics, then how we live with waste also embodies our ethical relations with it (or, our dwelling with it).
So how we deal with waste is more complex than just dumping it; or reducing waste in order to save the planet.