The garbage project - Christina Cherry

U-Bahn Feldstraße, the Heiligengeistfeld, the flak bunker, the Millerntor Stadium, the Rindermarkthalle, a gas station and in the middle a recycling yard: Is there a more suitable place in Hamburg to approach the waste culture of our time? The Recyclinghof St. Pauli is a public platform for 42 hours in 6 days in June 2017.

Garbage is presented and negotiated in containers in the form of objects, videos, lectures, workshops, interventions, performances and real rubble: The MÜLLPROJEKT, designed by the team of three curators from Hamburg with design theorist and artist Anke Haarmann, philosopher Harald Lemke and concept artist Nana Petzet, in cooperation with the Stadtreinigung Hamburg.

Together with local and international guests, the MÜLLPROJEKT transforms the St. Pauli recycling center into a platform for artistic, theoretical and designer actions. The municipal collection point, converted into a temporary stage, makes the garbage theme tangible and tangible: with every throw into one of the containers, private waste becomes a communal resource. The project, which is funded by the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media as part of the Elbkulturfonds, will take place in the afternoon of the first three weekends in June 2017 at the Recyclinghof St. Pauli in Feldstraße 69, 20359 Hamburg (U3, MetroBus 3 + 6). Participation in the program and visiting the exhibition are free of charge.

Paths to garbage

Some of the numerous questions that arise from garbage-conscious thinking put, are for example: How is the current practice of municipal and commercial waste disposal to be assessed and where is the development going? Are there really sustainable cycles that do not lead to resource destruction or downcycling? What does recycling mean? And what prevents us from replacing throw-away with upcycling?

The state of a civilization can be seen from the way waste is handled, said French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. So far, our handling of leftovers and contaminated sites has been characterized by a strategy of devaluation: With the judgment "this is rubbish" something is finally declared worthless and banished from our perception and appreciation.

Growing garbage masses and dwindling resources are calling for a changed handling of waste and necessitating an aesthetic reassessment of the worthless. Alternative initiatives such as waste prevention blogs or upcycling trends outside of the established waste and cycle discourse are gaining in importance with the aim of recycling, reusing or upgrading and avoiding waste. The MÜLLPROJEKT wants to reflect this cultural change through artistic, philosophical and designer means and to transform trash into treasure, worthless into valuable in a critically creative way.

Aesthetics and garbage

Waste production cannot be transformed by making it perceptible through art alone, but rather by using cultural practices as aesthetic interventions and initiating practical encouragement. So instead of simply putting waste in the limelight and auratising it in garbage objects, what is needed is a "littering of aesthetics" – a disturbance of the image that everything becomes beautiful again – an intensive treatment of the garbage problem through art, design and philosophy. We ask: What do we perceive as "garbage" at all? Can waste prevention strategies be upgraded to future-oriented cultural practices? And how does society deal with their garbage? Can the garbage problem be solved by design? Which philosophical principles will guide such a transformation design?

contextualization

We propose to use the mass produced, massively available and, in addition, constantly growing resource »garbage« in order to turn a global problem into an »anthropoethical project«. It can be assumed that the garbage problem is social expression or, strictly speaking, the social waste of collective indifference. In the short era of capitalist industrialization and its globalization process, the ever increasing garbage masses of modern throwaway society were treated as insignificant side effects of progress. But with growing prosperity, its unsightly side effects and legacies have also grown. In fact, the impure reason of our prosperity model shows us the crisis-like realization that the festival may be coming to an end. Because every day people feel it a little more: The garbage is about to grow over our heads, it threatens to make the planet uninhabitable.

The project

The project is looking for ways out of the fate of looming litter: With a series of theoretical lectures, artistic and designer research work and practical work shows, we want the existing garbage as a valuable resource for ethical self-reflection use and to upgrade to a sustainable material of social rethinking. The exhibition or, more appropriately, the aesthetic illustration of a possible, different waste management takes place on the site of a centrally located recycling yard of the city of Hamburg. From this special place, the possible future and the social perspectives of waste minimization of all kinds are explored.

The topic is negotiated and presented at the waste site. Artists and designers work with or against waste and present their visions. Garbage experts and fashion designers are invited, to show their know-how in dealing with material residues. Waste experts and theoreticians talk about the reality of recyclables and the utopian potential of contaminated sites. Perhaps our throw-away society ends up where it belongs: on the “manure heap of history” (Karl Marx), in order to become the breeding ground for a desirable civilization that knows no garbage.

opening hours

3.-18th June 2017
Saturdays 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Sundays 2-7pm

Paths to garbage

Aesthetics and garbage

contextualization

The project

opening hours

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