Waste is not an object: it is a sight, a sound, a smell, a feeling. The triumph of western progress and the capitalist system is a complete erasure of the sensory experience of waste. Shit is out of sight, out of mind. The contemporary consciousness thrives on the illusion of complete separation from the byproducts of our daily activities.

Our interaction with trash is sanitized, contained, and categorized. It gives a false sense of control. The series of photos represents the arranged and clean version of waste that exists in the inner space of the home, and its transformation to outdoor spaces, where the tidy organization starts to disintegrate.

What appears to be a chaotic mess of filth on garbage day is a relatively tame and managed version: other streets of the world are made of waste, lined with it, and filled to the brim with it. Peoples lives operate off of it, and their homes are made of it. The complete disconnect between these two forms of being are astounding. The amount of trash that would pile on top of us with our usage in North America would be sensorially overwhelming: like the river Thames and its past days as a sewage deposit site. But, maybe that’s just what we need to wake up, and to reassess our current structures of society, and the imbalances that they produce and propagate.

In the photos, the juxtaposition of the cheery and hopeful slogans on the products, and their sad state of disuse and decay creates an ironic sentiment. Their original use seems so empty and void of meaning when all placed in one trash bag to be disposed of, and never seen again. While unpleasant, I think making waste visible is necessary in order to deconstruct our false sense of control, and expand our society’s consciousness to understand their never-ending connection to the byproducts of their day to day functions.