the wasteland is a playground
(a plastic flower never dies)

Week 2: The first few weeks at the residency have been a crash course and deep dive into what can only be described as an unparalleled, unconventional playground of material. More than just expanding the scope of my practice, already the experience has reshaped my perception of humans’ relationship to the material world. I’m witnessing the life cycle of desire is a phrase that keeps coming to mind as I take in everything from the endless train of frozen French fry boxes to discarded Valentines to immortal bright roses spun from polyester plastics.

Found: Poems, so much sheet music, an unsent unopened card “patience, le soiled nest pas is loin”….for whom was this meant and why never sent? I am collecting things in French. I am collecting the cards that turn up (Will I get a full deck? I’m getting lucky with Jacks.) The most beautiful pornographic image torn from a magazine whizzed past me so briskly I couldn’t snatch it from the belt and jaws of the bailer. This residency is wild. This is witness to the life cycle of desire. Materiality never felt so material. Material also never felt so metaphysical. Humans never felt like such a singularity. 

Those items were pulled during a 30 minute stint on the sort line at the Recology MRF (Material Recovery Facility). I was working at the point in the line where miscellaneous film and plastic containers get pulled from the train of paper products racing toward their destination (the bailer). It’s unbelievable what comes through: Everything you can imagine multiplied by ewww and woah.

Note: We are building a tomb for ourselves. A sarcophagus spun of polyurethane, encircled by fields of immortal bright roses rendered in polyester fabrics and polyurethane faux silk. To sift through the cast off is to wade through reflecting pools.

Having recently delved into studies of AI, I am somewhat surprised, but not astounded, to feel a similar sense of universality: Perhaps it’s merely hubris, but I can’t help but feel each inquiry—one through the lens of artificial intelligence, the other through vast bodies of material waste—serve as mirrors to reflect a current of the human condition, and our relationship (both aspirational and flawed) to life, each other, and all forms of life. Call it divination if you will: these inquiries are as vivid, harshly brilliant in their messaging, as a scrying mirror.

Note: Flowers fake? Simulacraceae: the violet plastic flowers scattered, drifting across an open sea. Cellophane gathered in stiff ruffles against the plastic-coated wire stems.