Manifesta9: Coal > Rubbish (Part 2)
In thinking about the coal and rubbish of Manifesta9, the question arose; is coal rubbish? It could be considered 300 million year old organic carbon-based rubbish. But in its natural, mined state it has intrinsic energy potential and therefore monetary value – surely the antithesis of rubbish? Such a precious, finite resource could not be rendered as rubbish.
In the Antechamber recreation of Marcel Duchamp’s grotto from Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in 1938, the brazier featuring a few coal pieces looks like a common urban bin. Such bin design probably originated from the brazier function of burning waste materials, and contemporary bins function as braziers either by discarded still-lit cigarettes or by bored teenagers’ arson.
When coal is burned and its potential energy transformed to heat energy, the waste materials are the toxic gases and ash. To make coal into rubbish you need to burn it – use it – resulting in the transformation into ash so it is no longer coal; it’s physical properties altered. The value of coal is in its energy potential, otherwise it is just very old dirt from the ground.
Rubbish and dirt are often synonymous. Dirt in the form of coal ash (dust) was collected by dust-men from households as one of the earliest forms of waste collection in the 1820s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_waste_management Coal is considered dirty as it leaves residual marks everywhere but now it also considered a dirty form of energy production http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/ releasing carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and mercury into the atmosphere, massively contributing to greenhouse gases, acid rain and contaminated land and water as well as childhood asthma, birth defects and respiratory diseases. Filthy stuff. Dirt, as “a substance, such as mud or dust, that soils someone or something” (Oxford Dictionaries) is certainly the stuff of coal-based energy production.
But are dirt and rubbish always synonymous? To consider coal as rubbish, it’s definition of 300 million year old waste needs to negate its energy potential value. In a paradox of coal as very very old rubbish and also a highly valued resource, coal will only be considered truly rubbish if it can be defined as valueless in contemporary society – a very unlikely prospect given our dependency on energy.
