Refuse is the sediment of human existence. It serves as the material foundation of our contemporary life — as it did in the ancient world. But the very processes of production that make our present world possible also imperil its future. Consider sites like Monte Testaccio from 2 CE, where a spoil heap appears as a mountain beside the Tiber River in the Roman landscape — evidence that humans have always been trash-producing machines. Ask any anthropologist: if you want to understand a culture, look at their trash.
But what exactly is trash? How do we decide? What does trash mean— the stuff itself, the ways in which it is made, the ways we treat it — and what kinds of attention does it require? Given the accelerating rate of human-made disasters on Earth, how can we reform our material attention to create a closed cycle and a cyclical feedback loop of use and reuse?
Led by acclaimed conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll, this seminar will draw on design, visual art, architecture, public policy, and even music to see trash anew. With readings from Edouard Glissant, Hannah Arendt, Valeria Luiselli , and others, we'll seek to come into closer relationship with the invisible material processes that drive our world.