statement Reading the River

Reading the River
statement

"These are real problems -- land fills filling up, difficulties opening replacements -- and as so often seems to be the case with this nation's intractable ills, the only meager solace one can find is in the fact that they are nothing new. Appropriate places for garbage are becoming scarcer year by year ..... Already the inhabitants in proximity to the public dumps are beginning to complain. chief health officer of Washington, D.C. -- 1889. Rubbish, by William Rathje

In the 19th century, steamboat captains on the Mississippi River learned how to "read" the shifting sandbars and tidal changes, and how to know when the snags or debris were collecting at dangerous points in the river. The term Reading the River also relates to navigating around, through or over any object, bridge or body of water and knowing the area's characteristics in all weather conditions, day or night. I will expand the notion of Reading the River by documenting and collecting solid waste or trash found in and around the city of Hull, sampling the landfill, and other dumping grounds. The action of exploring, collecting, tagging and incorporating my findings into an installation called Site Layers and a web site will be a form of reading the River Hull Corridor over a period of time. Reading the River is a response to the behavior of "throwing away" trash found in the city and surrounding area of Hull. I have retrieved items of trash from their "away" location and have brought them into the gallery where I have sorted them for use in production of the installation, Site Layers.

Late October, 2001, I visited Hull, England, for the first time to participate in the annual Root Festival and to present an artist talk related to the rivercommission. The audience was comprised of artists, curators, HTBA staff and participants of the festival. I discussed my past and current work as it applies to discarded debris in material culture. While in Hull I spent a good portion of my time exploring the city streets and alley ways, the banks of River Hull and the rich historical ambiance of the place. Of great interest to me is the debris scattered throughout the city. How did it get there? Who dropped it? What were they thinking when they let go of the thing they no longer wanted? Most cities today have various forms of debris found in the gutters and alley ways and large portions of this debris end up in the drainage system and rivers. We have become a global consumer culture that continues to find it difficult or impossible to reconstitute trash into

fringe effect

biodegradable or useful material. Waste management removes garbage out of sight to some place far away from sight and smell. Usually trash is dumped into a landfill or worse, it is incinerated. It is baffling to me how we are able to produce such sophisticated and diverse goods -- then transport them to almost every corner of the globe, often within a few days of their release from the manufacturer. But we are not able to reclaim and reuse our discarded materials. Waste management; is truly a modern phenomenon that most of us take for granted, but how long can we continue to bury our problems in the landfill? When it comes to the end of the cycle of the product we purchase and consume, we abandon our responsibility for its reuse or its safe disintegration. We become daft when it comes to recycling the unwanted packaging and/or damaged goods

My interests with the discarded materials of the River Hull Corridor is multifaceted: the location where the trash is found, the manufacture of the item, the distribution and who threw it away. Who is the consumer and transporter? What can the debris tell us? Is there a potential story connected to the trash? I am interested in what archaeologists call the fringe effect the disposal of garbage at the edges of the occupant's living space. For instance, in Africa, a tribal member would pitch garbage onto the floor until it became intolerable. She would cover it up with a new clay floor. Eventually the occupant of the house would have to raise the roof and door to compensate for the rising floor. I will use the term fringe effect to describe my explorations in Hull. Furthermore, I will address how this can be used as a material both formally and conceptually. I will collect trash as an archaeologist collects artifacts. The debris objects as artifacts of consumer culture is then displayed within the installation.