Obstructures

PREMISE: WASTE IS A THIEF

Waste is placed in a receptacle, and disappears to far off lands only to end up in hidden rubbish heaps. It is no longer our immediate problem once it is placed in the bin. We do not have to deal with the actual trash, but the indirect consequences of our waste in a way that does not allow us to make the connection between cause and effect. We are drowning in the consequences of our wasteful lifestyle. Indirectly our garbage is an obstruction to our progress, our environment, and our lives. This waste will be handled by others once it leaves the user’s hands, be it simply trashed or recycled, one no longer has to deal with it. OBSTRUCTURES seeks to create something from this trash.

What if for three days the attendees were forced to deal with their waste? What if the trash became a physical obstruction? Can we turn obstructions in useful structures? Can the same walls that hold us back be re-configured to create seating, shelter, and space? OBSTRUCTURES seeks to blur the boundaries between obstruction and structure, observer and participator- gathering, cataloging and assembling massive amounts of material waste and converting it into modular and repetitive units that are useful, fun, or both.

PROPOSAL: DIS_ASSEMBLY LINE

The site given is 30’x30’ of open land. The installation will be an assembly line for refining and breaking down waste as a performance. Separated by different layers, walls, or curtains of processed garbage it will show the refinement from the recognizable object to a broken down fabric. Between these zones will be spaces or shelter, shade, rest and participation inviting the attendee to join in the process on multiple scales and levels of involvement.

The framework will begin with waste from the set up of the festival and the local recycling center. We will focus on plastic. On the first day of the festival our team will branch out and collect waste only to return to the staging area to convert it into more course masonry objects to be stacked and connected. OBSTRUCTURES will develop a catalog of moves using appropriate and low-tech connections to combine common types of garbage into more manageable units in a workshop weeks before the festival. Our goal is to encourage the attendee to interact in the hopes of forging a new relationship between mankind and waste though instruction, experimentation, subversion, and new form. The attendee will be invited to take and use their creation or the objects that we produce on the line.

Through scale and repetition intentional order will be created to re- contextualize the trash as useable material. It is intended that this installation will be both a spectacle and beacon for the pod at day and night through the use of the accumulated transparent waste as a filter for both artificial and natural light.