Newsstand: November 23, 2009
The Making of a Medley
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
Televisualist: A Kinder, Gentler Televisualist
Out of sight, out of mind.
That's how Pascal Murphy sees our culture's take on garbage. We purchase a product, consume it, and then toss it away. But he thinks we fail to consider what goes on after we toss it in the trash. And that's why he turned York University's Vari Hall into a dumpster for a day.
York amasses roughly twenty-two hundred tonnes of waste each year, the equivalent of about six tonnes per day (almost the weight of an elephant, daily). But with individual bins for collection, garbage bag changes throughout the day, and dumpsters in alleys, no one really sees it all add up―except for Pascal. A graduate student at York working on his masters in Environmental Studies and "Garbology," Pascal says the idea struck him at home in his apartment, conveniently overlooking―you guessed it―a dumpster. "Every day it keeps piling up, and then it gets taken away," he said, "And the more we hide it, the less we rethink it." To force people to see the trash for themselves, he, along with the deceivingly titled environmental group York Gets Wasted, invited students and faculty to throw their waste into a one-day landfill, smack dab in the entrance of the University's main foyer. Surrounded by cautionary tape and conversation-starting images like those from Chris Jordan's series on "Intolerable Beauty," the garbage pile grew in size and smelliness all day long.
It wasn't the prettiest art installation we've seen. Its rotting, dirty smell infiltrated the entire building and its surrounding pathways. At one point, Pascal had to interrupt answering a question to repeat a statement he'd just overheard from a passer-by. "Ugh, it smells like garbage everywhere," she'd groaned. But just like the old adage says, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. "Art is something that makes you think," said Pascal, admiring his work. Judging by the faces of the many who stopped by to admire the installation, his project seems more of a masterpiece.
Photos by Allan Lissner.
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While I laud Mr. Murphy for his effort to make a point about garbage at York U., the university (and I use that term loosely) has a lot of problems with its staff, students and culture that need a major rework - something that should be dealt with before anything else.
Great campaign! Reminds me of Zizek's rant in the recent documentary Examined Life.
http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/examined-life/
What does Pascal Murphy want us to rethink about garbage disposal, exactly? Is he making a larger argument against mass consumption, or is he simply peeved that products aren't built to last forever and, at some point, must be thrown away?
I'm glad I don't have to spend my limited free time thinking about decaying kitchen waste and old packaging. Keeping organic garbage, garbage garbage, and recycling separate consumes enough time as it is.
The point is that no product should be designed to be thrown away. Things should be repairable and recyclable.
York's waste stream is astounding, and the bulk of the student body (let's say, excluding Environmental Studies) possesses a decidedly York-dale one-way consumer mentality. I'm not envious of much about U of T, but things like the Swap Shop are at the top of my list.
Would you believe York wouldn't let the Regenesis @ York environmental student group hold a veggie potluck because "homemade food violates York's food policy"? Yeah.
As an institution, York was progressive in the 1960s but totally forgot to progress after that.
Sitting behind me in my York apartment is a couch I dumpster dived from behind another res... hauling-it-in-the-middle-of-the-night is the only type of sharing that York seems to encourage. Everything else reeks of... well... Vaughan.