Rubbish

Waste Types (source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_waste_types )

Agricultural waste

Animal by-products

Biodegradable waste

Biomedical waste

Bulky waste

Business waste

Chemical waste

Clinical waste

Coffee wastewater

Commercial waste

Composite waste

Construction and demolition waste (C&D waste)

Consumable waste

Controlled waste

Demolition waste

Domestic waste

Electronic waste (e-waste)

Food waste

Gaseous wastes

Green waste

Grey water

Hazardous waste

Heat waste

Household waste

Household hazardous waste

Human waste

Sewage sludge

Industrial waste

Slag

Fly ash

Sludge

Inert waste

Kitchen waste

Litter

Liquid waste

Marine debris

Medical waste

Metabolic waste

Mineral waste

Mixed waste

Municipal solid waste

Nuclear waste (see Radioactive waste)

Packaging waste

Post-consumer waste

Radioactive waste

Low level waste

High level waste

Mixed waste (radioactive/hazardous)

Spent nuclear fuel

Recyclable waste

Residual waste

Retail hazardous waste

Sewage

Sharps waste

Ship disposal

Slaughterhouse waste

Solid wastes

Special waste – see hazardous waste

Toxic waste

Uncontrolled waste

Waste heat

Wastewater

Winery wastewater

Waste Categories

There are many waste types defined by modern systems of waste management, notably including:

· Municipal Waste (includes Household waste, Commercial waste, and Demolition waste)

· Hazardous Waste (includes Industrial waste)

· Bio-medical Waste (includes Clinical waste)

· Special Hazardous waste (includes Radioactive waste, explosives waste, and Electronic waste (e-waste))

Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage (US) and refuse or rubbish (UK), is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. This is the category of waste that I am particualrly focused on.

Litter consists of waste products that have been disposed of improperly, without consent, in an inappropriate location. Litter can also be used as a verb. To litter means to throw (often man-made) objects onto the ground and leave them as opposed to disposing of them properly. While most litter is associated with containers, wrappers and paper product; dumped items may include furniture, appliances (white goods), old electronics (e-waste), abandoned vehicles or construction materials. These categories of waste often contain hazardous materials. The distinction between littering and illegal dumping is sometimes defined by volume or the location of the disposed of waste.

Post-Consumer Waste (source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-consumer_waste )

Post-consumer waste is a waste type produced by the end consumer of a material stream; that is, where the waste-producing use did not involve the production of another product.

Quite commonly, it is simply the garbage that individuals routinely discard, either in a waste receptacle or a dump, or by littering, incinerating, pouring down the drain, or washing into the gutter.

Post-consumer waste is distinguished from pre-consumer waste, which is the reintroduction of manufacturing scrap (such as trimmings from paper production, defective aluminum cans, etc.) back into the manufacturing process. Pre-consumer waste is commonly used in manufacturing industries, and is often not considered recycling in the traditional sense.

Types of Post-Consumer Waste

· packaging

· parts that are not needed, such as fruit skins, bones in meat, etc.

· undesired things received, (e.g.: advertising material in the mailbox; a flyer received in the street without having the opportunity to refuse; dust, weeds, fallen leaves, etc.)

· things one no longer needs, e.g. a magazine that has been read, things replaced by new versions, clothes out of fashion, remaining food that one cannot keep or does not want to keep

· broken things, things no longer working, spoiled food, worn-out clothes, clothes which no longer fit

· outgrown items toys, clothing, books, schoolwork

· disposables such as Kleenex and finished batteries

· human waste, waste of pets, waste water from various forms of cleaning

· “post-life waste”: (one’s body or ashes; things people do not want and cannot sell; broken/unused cars)

Categorisation: Stuff, Things and Objects

In a recent Guardian article by Justin McGuirk (17 September 2012) the Museum of Things is inspected revealing a history of German design and notions of function and taste. Through questioning why the Museum of Things and not Design, McGuirk cites Heidegger’s division of the world “into ‘things’ (more likely to be hand-crafted) and ‘objects’ (more likely to be machine-made), arguing that ‘things’ were more authentic.”

Where Tracy Potts in her TRASH Conference keynote paper recently made a distinction between stuff and matter in her discussion about clutter, McGuirk’s references to Heidegger’s distinction between things and objects creates a synergy of categorisation in which the designed world can be ordered; stuff and objects being the machine-made clutter whilst matter and things have “thing-power” and Heideggerian Being-in-the-World (In-der-Welt-sein).

Heidegger considered the study of being a human phenomenological construct; “Only as phenomenology, is ontology possible.” Being and Time (Roderick Munday provides a useful glossary of terms in Being and Time here: http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/b_resources/b_and_t_glossary.html )

Books as Rubbish

With the proliferation of digital information via the internet, ebooks and kindles, traditional books are arguably becoming or have become (to some degree) obsolete. There is strong support and advocacy to uphold a place for the traditional physical book object in our cultural and educational landscape, but the book is increasingly seen as an archaic receptacle of information. Another throwaway commodity, the value of many books is next to nothing. Artists often make use of this decline in value of a once revered subject matter through their work.

I recently met Laura-L Broad (@design_craft) on twitter and found out about her craft-based practice utilising old books to make functional objects such as floors http://laura-lbroad.blogspot.co.uk/

And yesterday I visited the paper exhibition First Cut at Manchester Art Gallery

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/index.php?itemID=92 One of the artists featured in the show is Manchester based Nicola Dale who often uses books as material in her work as well as other paper materials such as wallpaper. http://www.nicoladale.com/

The piece presented in this show in Sequel (2012). “For Sequel Dale adorned the branches of a felled 12-foot oak tree with thousands of individual leaves cut from the pages of unwanted reference books rescued from library sales, charity shops and skips.”

The exhibition also has a room dedicated to the production processes of Dale’s and Westgate Studios’ Andy Singleton’s work. In here, a categorisation process is illustrated with photographs of the cut book-leaves in plastic tabs labelled with handwritten labels such as “dinosaurs.” Alongside the photographs is a text panel quoting Dvora Yanov in Interdisciplinary Introduction to Categorization, interview with Christine Baele:

“Categorization” means “making categories.” We all do it, every day, in everyday ways. Go into a supermarket: its produce and other goods are categorized. Have breakfast in the morning, lunch midday, dinner at night – you are engaging in categorization. Identify people you pass in the street as “infants,” “children,” “youth” or “teenagers,” “adults,” “elderly,” and you have categorized them. And so forth, from my perspective as an ethnographer. Because it is so common-place, there is no “most illustrative” example. The more important point to note is that because of its commonplace-ness, we do not attend to our category-making. That is the source both of its power and of its problematic character: category structures (“taxonomies”) entail tacit knowledge which is made explicit at times only with difficulty; and that knowledge is created from a point of view that also goes unattended – unless we make it a point to focus on this everyday, common sense, unspoken, unwritten knowledge…

Categories – all of them – do not exist in nature; they are human creations, made collectively (by a smaller group – e.g., an organization – or a larger entity – a society).

Full interview here: http://www.revue-emulations.net/archives/n8/categentretien

Currently Reading: Rachel Buchanan – Recycling Doctoral Waste

The offcuts, outtakes, remnants, scraps, dust and all the other intellectual waste products generated by a PhD or any other large research project.

http://journals.publishing.monash.edu/ojs/index.php/ha/article/view/ha100011/87

Buchanan references Klaus Neumann’s ‘the subversive potential of trash’

Klaus Neumann – But is it History? http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/viewFile/2095/2270

Klaus Neumann – Starting From Trash http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03149099209508456

“Many artists are working with ‘the aesthetic of detritus’, exploring rubbish to make comments on consumption, excess and climate change (Engberg 2009: 64–65). In August and September 2009, at La Trobe University’s Museum of Art, for example, Lauren Berkowitz made a garden from plants grown in takeaway food containers and Ash Keating created made sculptures from industrial waste salvaged from landfill (O’Brien et al. 2009: 23–49).” (p.11.4)

“Excavation is also an appropriate metaphor for rediscovering, recycling or uncovering the stories that are buried or discarded in footnotes.” (p.11.6)

Endnote 2: “I was influenced by John Frow’s point about aristocratic leisure being, at its core, ‘the deliberate and ostentatious wasting of time’ (Frow 2003: 27). In the collection’s introduction Gay Hawkins and Stephen Muecke write that waste is connected with time and history. ‘To the cultural coordinates of habits and emotion, we will have to add another: history. Waste is a product of time, since it is literally an end produce and the end of all living things. But it is a temporalizing effect, since the inevitability of waste is a repetitive and qualifying event. Events erupt and stay with us; others, as the saying goes, are consigned to history’s proverbial waste bin’ (Frow 2003: xiv).”

Currently Reading: Tim Noble & Sue Webster – Wasted Youth (2006, Rizzoli, New York)

I borrowed this book from the University library this acquaint myself with Noble & Webster’s back catalogue and find more about how they source their rubbish.

The book depicts earlier light works (1996-2004) and light projected rubbish assemblages (1998-2003) as well as welded scrap metal pieces (2004-5) and resin figures (1997/2000). The large format of the book is akin to a 12 inch LP and is dedicated mainly to glossy images of the works and two essays by British curator Norman Rosenthal, and New York gallerist Jeffrey Deitch.

http://www.timnobleandsuewebster.com/wasted_youth.html

In the first essay at the back of this book by Norman Rosenthal, The Magic Arts of Noble & Webster – Tim and Sue, Rosenthal proposes that “an anti-aesthetic of vulgarity rules on the surface of their work” and discusses their skill – “aspects that are never – as is often the case nowadays, and historically – farmed out to studio assistants of even to craftsmen.”

“There is an extraordinary sense of craft and technical virtuosity that is both hard-won and has a self-self and improvisational quality, achieved largely through arduous trial and error.”

He mentions that the trash they use in their work is arbitrarily collected. On sourcing material for the scrap metal works, he mentions that the metal was scrounged from Sir Anthony Caro’s studio (with great irony).

On their self-portrayal in their work, Rosenthal asserts that Noble & Webster only depict themselves, refusing all requests from those who might want to have their own portraits made out of rubbish.

The second, longer, biographical account Black Magic by Jeffrey Deitch outlines their collaborative practice from meeting at Nottingham Trent University in 1986 to the current practice at the time of publication.

He cites the local carnival in Nottingham as a source of inspiration and material with its tacky displays and flashing lights. “Tim and Sue would spend time foraging for strange pieces which they would then assemble into sculpture.”

Deitch notes that the artists travelled to Turkey and the US on summer breaks whilst at university “touring junk yards foraging for discarded parts and dragging sacks of junk back to England.”

In 1990, the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds secured a studio for them at Dean Clough in Halifax where they made welded assemblages. After university they moved to Bradford, initially avoiding London, “absorbing themselves in the ‘rubbish landscape’ of the city.”

On the British Rubbish show at Independent Art Space, London, in 1996, Deitch accounts that they were invited by gallerist Max Wigram to curate a group show, but frustrated by the lack of a show of their own work, uninvited the lined-up artists. (the exhibition invite was “British Rubbish in tomato sauce” in the style of a label for tinned baked bins: http://www.timnobleandsuewebster.com/tnsw_exhibitions/british_rubbish_invite.jpg )

Dirty White Trash (with Gulls) (1998) was made from empty packaging of everything they ate, drank, smoked and otherwise consumed collected over 6 months and dumped in a pile on the studio floor. “The artists’ concept was to construct a work out of the remains of all the products that they needed to survive during the work’s creation. […] Despite its formalist logic Dirty White Trash (with Gulls) also recalls the radical anti-form attitude of the toughest scatter art and Alan Suicide’s punk sculptures of random piles of electronic debris.”

Cheap ‘n’ Nasty (2000) was assembled from piles of cheap and nasty tiys and household junk bought from the ‘everything for £1’ shops in the East End of London.

The installation The Undesirables (2000) involved the transportation of a mountain of garbage collected from the streets of the East End into one of the grandest galleries in the Royal Academy.

Falling Apart (2001) was made from objects broken and thrown in fights resulting from the financial pressures in The Dirty House studio project.

Kiss of Death (2003) was a choice of rats, crows and other scavengers; “the lowest form of animal life.”