tracing trash

waste. trash. mongo. compost. garbage.

Can an excavation of trash reveal how New Yorkers understand this hidden social and physical infrastructure? Could plucking trash temporarily from the waste stream serve as a catalyst for new ways of understanding or even minimizing that stream? As the conversations continued, ACT10 focused more precisely on several facets of the waste stream and how these facets might be exposed. Five linked components of Tracing Trash are in development, as detailed below. In addition, a gallery event will take place in late January, to examine and synthesize the results of the various components.

rather than waste waste, contemplate it, capture it, expose it. challenge it

The ACT10: Tracing Trash group began their initial wide-ranging conversation with two broad concepts: food justice and urban land use. Descriptions of Fresh Kills, waste transfer station locations, guerrilla compost strategies, statistics about discarded food, and the politics of smell indicated a shared fascination with waste currently inherent in the urban food system. As food cycles through the city, on its path to consumption, it collects waste [wrapping, packaging, transit] and becomes waste: peelings, leftovers, table scraps, wishful thoughts. The origin of food has captured the popular imagination [as the ubiquity of urban agriculture conferences attests] – what if we interrupted and studied the shadowy actions of loss, removal and decay? ACT10 determined to submit food’s trashy end to a close and imaginative inspection.

GARBAGE ETYMOLOGY

early 15c., "giblets of a fowl, waste parts of an animal," later confused with garble in its sense of "siftings, refuse." etymonline.com

The word garbage came into English from French cooks... It was what French cooks called the guts of chickens and geese. Quickly the word began to be applied to any sort of food waste and within 150 years began to mean any refuse at all. podictionary.com