On the form and content of waste.

Modern times require that we give rubbish a place where we cannot see it. So we forget about trash, making it disappear and hauling it away to a non-place. We buy waste every day, yet we are bothered by the sight of it. Any product designed to be recycled is designed to be wasted. Nietzsche said: "Waste, debris and rubbish are not something to be condemned in and of themselves: they are a necessary consequence of life. The phenomenon of decadence is as necessary as any progress or advancement in life: it is not within our means to eliminate it (...)" (Posthumous passages from spring, 1888).

Our existence implies waste. Perhaps we could say that we use reason to construct the rubbish that surrounds us and that we don’t see, trying to imitate the perfect machinery of nature that accomplishes alone what humankind only attempts at.

Our waste is the residue of our most mundane acts. It carries an emotional load, even if we cease viewing it as something uncomfortable or a hindrance: the most intimate parts of our experience have passed through it. However, we get rid of it without giving it any greater importance. We blush when someone else sees our garbage, and it is in that place or non-place where all rubbish loses its identity and becomes just one more part of a whole.

Rather than adopting a self-critical or socially critical perspective, “Redestinar” can only be a failed attempt to achieve what cannot be achieved. It rambles about the idea of the non-place, where all our intimate experiences accumulate day after day. It decontextualises rubbish as residue, while we are used to situating it in a context of “it never existed, and if it did, it doesn’t any more”. It uses trash as an aesthetic vehicle to show us a way to an ironic perspective of beauty.

Laura Gianetti © 2003-13