AND WHAT'S ACTUALLY WRONG WITH GARBAGE?

A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD PROBLEM.

           

 Photograph by Augusta Sagnelli.

    As Augusta Sagnelli illustrated vividly in a recent posting, France is gripped by a garbage strike - staged by sanitation workers convinced that the rigorous intellectual and physical demands of moving wheelie bins from the kerb to the rear of a truck, then back again, entitle them to cease work at 62 and live the rest of their years in well-paid ease.

         Until the present unpleasantness, the record of Paris in this area was enviable. It was once the cleanest of cities, spending more per capita on sanitation than any other western capital. Garbage was collected twice a week, sidewalks and gutters hosed down with equal frequency. To dispose of an object too bulky for a bin, the service des encombrants would make an appointment to collect it. Not that much remained on the sidewalk long enough to be collected. Scavengers cruised the streets day and night, alert for anything remotely saleable - unless, that is, some eagle-eyed neighbour didn't grab it first.

            Now, sadly, Paris has joined those communities where sidewalks blocked by mountains of black bags and bales of cardboard cartons are a daily fact of life. But those who protest are taking the negative view. There are other ways of looking at refuse; not as a problem but a resource.

            Recycling is well-established as a concept; surely having heaps of garbage on our doorsteps should encourage us to apply it more proactively. We can learn from artists who have already made moves in this direction. Piero Manzoni used his own excrement as a medium, even canning some samples. (If you're seeking a gift for that friend who has everything….)

            Others plasticized corpses for use as art objects. Heidi Hatry employs the ashes of the cremated to paint their portraits. But such efforts merely scratch the surface.

Architecture is the most obvious art with options to expand. Imagine rmoving all concerns of aesthetics or function from a building; to employ the largest quantity of the least attractive materials as expeditiously and extravagantly as possible.

Frank Gehry’s MPoP building in Seattle, Washington.

            Hollywood, as ever alert for new ways to make money with the minimum of effort, has put its collective shoulder to the wheel and revived the zombie genre, recycling useless old personalities in even more useless old plots. One could argue, however, that not nearly enough has been done to exploit this fad. Such films, like pornography er, adult movies, can be made with performers having no talent at all, except for an ability to move mechanically and maintain a fixed expression.

Dwayne Johnson in BAYWATCH.

            Personal relationships also offer a multitude of ways to re-use the formerly discarded. Speaking for myself, I've made a small contribution by having been married before - and not once but twice! Nothing new about that, of course. As early as 1921, Fanny Brice was singing, in Second Hand Rose, "Even Jake, the plumber, he's the man I adore/He had the nerve to tell me he's been married before." But what's being done to apply modern technology to this area? Husbands and wives, indeed whole families no longer fit for use because of low intelligence or a native excess of malice might be sent to a recycling centre where employment could be found for even the most stupid and hostile - staffing computer help lines, for example.  

            As a repository for those most radically challenged in the areas of intelligence, charisma and personal charm, the most obvious profession is, of course, public service and politics. These, however, are already thoroughly colonized by the inept, the unfit, possibly even…the Undead?