The Politics of Trade and Trash

The Politics of Trade and Trash (Photo Credit Julie Sando)
Troy David Ouellette 2006

When I first set out to collect trash alongside Huron Church Road I had no idea that I would be bringing back two garbage bags full of items that ranged from receipts for paper shredders to bottled water. I was amazed at the implications this suggested – namely that we have very little control over our lives as citizens to assert rights regarding quality of life. This also holds true in terms of ethical input to change the direction of systems of technology. Virtually everything has become commodified. Although our democratic institutions profess to allow for the commercial exchanges to provide for a variety of products it could be suggested, by the evidence of the garbage within this project, that there is actually little variety. Our free agency and our ability to build a community with local resources is almost non-existent. The western economy is built on a paradigm that regards nature as a resource. The implications of such an attitude do not bode well for the future.

Growing up in the 1970s it was unthinkable that, in the near future, bottled water would become a common commodity one simply trusted the local water authority to do their job with local taxes. Industry was expected to be ethical enough to dispose of waste properly, although it often didn't. This lack of ethical integrity, the prioritization of profit over public welfare has persisted and grown. As Herbert Marcuse commented, "There is no personal escape from the apparatus which has mechanized and standardized the world, (66) For me it was important to make this visible.

The statement by Marcuse offers up very little room to manoeuvre in terms of individual autonomy indeed he also points out that many scientific discoveries are shelved as soon as they interfere with profitable marketing. This is in his essay the “Social Implications of Technology”. 1982

By manipulating the garbage collected I fashioned a map of North America and local area, graphs, and a display showing the contents of what had been archived from a performance of garbage collecting. The introduction of “old” technology the computer references a system of technological production and commodity. In this case a very hopeless system indeed, tethered to its trademark umbilical electrical cord, which powers a tiny display listing the items gathered. The display technology exemplifies what Derrida referred to as "Archive Fever." 'Archive Fever' demonstrates the mnemonic unreliability of the archive, which at once preserves and institutes the "true" interpretation, the traditional reception of the material it records. Just as the encyclopedic documentation purveys a universal order and is disrupted by difference - gaps and fissures in the order of things and is subsumed by an "irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement."(91)
The graph or chart is a manifestation of data collection, forecasting trends and events from the downturn of the stock market to sales forecasts. They are inextricably tied to notions of progress. By the juxtaposition of the map, the graphs become suspect and open to question.

My pursuit to determine the origin of waste was made manifest through the stringing together of various locations that became increasingly futile. Although a package may say, "Made in Canada", the paper resources may be from the United States, the ink may be from Mexico, and the manufacturing facilities may have been in Toronto, with the package stored in a warehouse in Hamilton. What seems like rubbish from Windsor is a misnomer, although the responsibility in terms of collection and accumulation is another question. The map operates as a bridge from the manufacture to the hand fashioned cultural artefact and is a step towards the realization that artists in general sample from the things found in visual and commercial culture. However the continent of North America is consumed itself awash in garbage a landscape that has no horizon and is utterly overwhelmed by the commercial enterprises that seal its fate as only resource. In turn the artwork also becomes a commodity. The differences in material, the chemical evidence of the objects manufactured, the distances packaging travels and the affect of processes of weather on the rubbish are coupled with the marketing strategies of a capitalist economy and are laid bare. This is an Orwellian pop art one which contains all the trappings regarding the assertions for the rights of individuals to have unlimited variety of goods but, at the same time, realise that there is something amiss.
Problems that arise from excessive amounts of trash are certainly not lost on municipalities and environmentalists but again Marcuse's comment becomes all the more poignant because there seems to be little change in terms of limiting growth in some areas while encouraging others. This is the heteronomy of the masses – heteronomy in the Kantian sense, which under a capitalist meritocracy promotes all kinds of nasty things. These range from the notion that there always needs to be growth in markets (no matter what the cost) to the degradation of social spaces and alienation where the individual is lost in a sea of products and unattainable standards.

Whatever notions of progress we have, are mediated by technology, a consumer of a good in their quid pro quo transaction simply buys the good on the assumption that the product has been managed in a particular way. There is usually no concern regarding the circumstances that resulted in the items production.

One couldn’t imagine product packaging reading:
this item was not union made instead it was produced with materials from an important watershed made from sweatshop labour under a totalitarian tyranny with genetically modified organisms from countless hours of animal testing and undetectable nano technologies. Instead we get exhibit 3 "Blair’s Death Rain - Buffalo Wing” Chips from extream foods or exhibit 57 Nestle "Pure Life" Natural Spring Water 16.9 fl oz clear bottle blue, red print.
If the old axiom is “knowledge is power” then the other location, location, location is also power as portable technologies and RFID tags track positions of consumers, goods and delivery of services all in the name of efficiency and convenience. These things must obviously play out in a democracy but what will the checks and balances be? Will there be an opportunity for citizens to influence the direction of technology other than by the purchases they choose to make? What kind of models of control are people of differences willing to accept and how can we make technology more adaptive to use rather than use as a model for planned obsolescence and upgrade fever.


Marcuse, Herbert. Social Implications of Technology. Readings in the Philosophy of Technology. Kaplan. Roman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.2004

Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 1997.