{"id":82047,"date":"2022-09-14T15:46:47","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T15:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/?p=82047"},"modified":"2022-10-10T08:16:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T08:16:13","slug":"waste-inheritance-report2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/blog-en\/waste-inheritance-report2","title":{"rendered":"Waste (Inheritance) #Report2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Video still by Sergio Zalmas, sorting the trash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

September has just begun, and in the Project Room some forms are starting to emerge: undergarments made from old t-shirts and masks, a paper dress insulation layer, and a backpack fashioned from an assortment of materials ranging from polystyrene packing materials to cords woven from garbage bags to plastic buckles carved from laundry detergent bottles. But I would like to take you a few steps back, dear reader, to the year of collecting our trash, and to the two months I spent sorting it.<\/p>\n

In committing to collecting the trash, I needed to have the consent and participation of my son and husband. My husband was rightfully concerned about the ways this might infringe on our living space\u2013which was already stressed with the whole family working and studying at home due to covid lockdowns. We agreed to store the trash in bags outside the house until I could secure an external place where I could work on the project. It took a couple of months to work out the “rules” of what and how to save. Masks and other non-recyclable trash weren’t consistently saved initially, and the extensive waste from covid tests were at first discarded as potentially hazardous bio waste. But at some point, with my growing dismay about all that single-use material, we saved this too. To handle food packaging that was soiled by its contents, we did expend water to clean it. With the exception of batteries\u2013a very toxic waste\u2013we didn\u2019t recycle so as to keep all the packaging.<\/p>\n

2021 was not an ordinary year. It was a pandemic year, and Greece underwent several strict lockdowns where movement outside the home was limited. We shopped and cooked differently. We made a lot of bread; we drank a lot of coffee, working long hours from home at the computer. We didn\u2019t entertain or have parties… While everyone may have altered their consumption during the pandemic, our waste is also, of course, specific to us. Austerity veterans and artists, we don\u2019t have a lot of buying power. Our old home, with the wine-making facility that was the family\u2019s business generations ago, allows us to make wine ourselves each year\u2013and we drink from a barrel, not a bottle.* We value the home-made and don\u2019t buy unnecessary gadgets. We reuse and repurpose things as much as we are able. My family’s ongoing attempts to minimize the amount of packaging waste we bring home through mindful shopping is probably not the norm.\u00a0Nevertheless, it has been interesting to hear the differing impressions from museum visitors about the amount of our waste. Some people see it as very large\u2013because any family\u2019s waste for a year is large if you see it all at once, but also because they believe we personally consumed a lot. However, many people see the amount as smaller than they expected, as they consider how much trash they themselves take out weekly. Comparisons are then made about national shopping habits, or cultural expectations for packaging, about the prevalence of local recycling facilities, and the effects of restrictions on the amount of personal garbage made in some countries vs. countries like Greece where there are none.<\/p>\n

After a year\u2019s collection of trash, EMST artistic director, Katerina Gregos invited me to use the Project Room to work on the project. When a truck arrived to transport my \u201csculptural materials\u201d to the museum, the drivers were, perhaps, upset to realize they\u2019d be transporting garbage. For the next two months, the Project Room became home to this waste, and I noted a reluctance by some to keep the exhibition lights on when I wasn\u2019t there because the work \u201cwasn\u2019t finished.\u201d But I understood that the exhibition had already begun because visitors poked their heads in the room and watched me during the somewhat gross and often tedious procedure of sorting my waste into material categories. Some watched, some were embarrassed to watch. Trash is something we repress. We move it out of our homes and away from us as soon as we are able. It is disgusting, it is almost shameful, and certainly, it is meant to be private\u2013the way it reveals your habits, your illnesses, and your finances. These, in fact, are what make trash so interesting to archaeologists who study how a society has lived.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Package made from layers of different materials\u2026what does this mean for recycling?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A few weeks ago, I spoke with an archaeologist who studies societies through their pottery shards, which are the primary remnants that survived the passing of time. But even with a single material, it is possible to understand, by their differing mineral contents and designs, the trade routes and manufacturing of a people and something of the values embedded in the designs. Think what gifts we are leaving to the future archaeologist\u2013with our \u201cforever\u201d plastic and with disposable objects that devoured materials from around the world! What will they understand about our society and culture? Will we be written into their history books with loving eyes?<\/p>\n

In my waste, I saw plainly my individual family\u2019s frailties and extravagances. Another pack of pasta, another package of medicine. The regularity of contents found in bag after garbage bag was banal. I found our needs and habits coupled with the disconnected, mass-produced wrappings of consumerism disturbing. At the same moment, our trash is generic and personal. Variations within it were received like writings in a journal\u2026this<\/em> wrapping from a birthday, this<\/em> paper marking the end of my son\u2019s successful school year, that<\/em> bottle shared on a memorable family evening\u2013I remembered the year as if I were looking at photographs.<\/p>\n

Sorting trash over two months was an apprenticeship in materials which serves me now as I sculpt it. Touching the plastics, I noticed how some were oily and elastic, some were brittle and made a crunchy sound when you folded them, some had properties that left me feeling electrostatically charged. When I left the museum at night\u2013things clung to me. I saw objects designed to be strong and waterproof, and others designed to be attractive to the eye. I saw the energy, ingenuity and labor that had been put into their production, and I realized that we mostly never notice any of it. We buy, consume, and toss out. Many objects were made from different materials so intricately bound to one another that they can never be recycled. Others were already breaking down into microplastics\u2013releasing and distributing their chemical contents into tiny particles that take to the air, circulate in ground water and are easily ingested by every creature on earth. I felt the toxicity of materials through the permeability of my skin. Returning home, I took a cold shower, forcing my pores to close. I would try to wash these materials away from me\u2013not because they are trash but because they are, as I\u2019ve learned more and more, toxic to our bodies.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo by Anna Primou, recycled paper and paper cords made by Nori Tsouloucha<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo by Anna Primou, garbage bag cords made by Nadia Elgazar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finally, the room was divided by material, and worktables and tools were brought in. The four sculpture assistants began experiments to find ways to create rope, fabric, and baskets by deconstructing trash and then weaving, sewing, and interconnecting the pieces, using no adhesives or materials external to the trash itself. Net vegetable bags were dismantled into thread. Masks were sewn into fabrics, bags were woven into cord. Aluminum cans were broken down and folded into metal sheets. Paper was shredded and reconstituted. This was painstaking, time-consuming work, but offered us revelations about the unfulfilled potential of our trash. We\u2019ve also found limits to our knowledge about the materials or the systems that produced them. Shortly I will open upload a page of questions we have. Please answer if you have relevant knowledge, or feel free to share your own views on some of our open-ended questions.<\/p>\n

*Thankfully for this project! If we had bottles for the amount of wine we drank, I would have no hope to carry or drag the weight.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo by Anna Primou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Return to blog<\/a><\/h4>\n