Monika Thomas: August 2013

2020?, 2008 was a beautiful and inspiring "evolving art installation". With this project, Melbourne based artist Ash Keating, together with a number of invited artists, aimed to draw attention to the sheer amount of CLEAN WASTE that goes into our landfills each year. This included exploring issues such as excessive consumerism, questioning industrial waste management and exploring sustainability in artistic practice.

By all means a huge agenda! However, the advantage of an artistic cross-disciplinary collaboration is that you can achieve greater impact because the outcomes usually exceed one person's professional and personal capacity.

INSPIRATION AND CONCEPT

Keating says his inspiration for 2020? came during his employment as a waste auditor in Melbourne and Adelaide in 2003/04 where he witnessed hundreds of trucks dumping large quantities of good resource and materials.

The type of clean waste Keating was talking about included a variety of wood, steel, aluminium electrical wiring and plastic, vinyl and so forth - resources many artists cannot afford!

'Waste' - Photo: Ash Keating (copyright Ash Keating)

Keating's concept, an "evolving installation ", became part of the Next Wave Festival in Melbourne. The festival's theme 'Closer Together' acted as the

... the thematic string that links the projects and performances of the festival, the notion of being closer together sought to solicit from the viewer an emotional and critical response—an intense physical shudder, a yearning for something better or possibly a reflective exploration of one’s sense of self in an increasingly hyper real world.. (Goh 2008)

Therefore, participating artists played an important role in educating the public about the massive amounts of clean industrial waste that ends up in landfills around Australia.

According to The National Waste Report 2010

43,777,000 tonnes of waste were generated in Australia in 2006-07

If waste generation grows at 4.5 % per annum, Australia will generate 81,072,593 tonnes of waste in 2020-21

This effectively halves the life cycle of our landfills in the future! For this alone, and for many other reasons it is not difficult to comprehend why this project was publicly funded and supported by various government bodies and industry partners.

2020?, 2008 Sponsors

EPA Victoria, The Department of Sustainability and Environment, SITA Environmental Solutions provided in kind support with materials and workers to help identify, collect and transport to the Meat Factory. Other supporter included the Ergas Collection, the City of Melbourne, Trafficlight, Australian Food and Grocery Commission, Australian Sustainable Industry Research Centre and Sustainable Learning Australasia

THE EVOLVING INSTALLATION PROCESS

For 2020, 2008 Keating intercepted two 23 metre bulk bins of industrial waste collected at Hampton Park landfill. With the help of SITA it was delivered the Melbourne Meat Markets for the purpose of an evolving installation project. The project ran from the 23.5. 2008 to the 31. of May 2008 during the Melbourne Next Wave Festival.

The evolving installation process began with Keating...

creating a structure and foundation with the waste in the centre of the space, and on the evening of May 15^th condensed the waste into a large pile with assistance from Mark Freeman, Lucas Maddock, Campbell Drake, Ardi Gunawan and Darren Munce. Following the opening night the pile was dismantled and went through a 'process of segregation' with the assistance of Bridie Lunney, Kay Abude, Ariel Aguilera, Lindsay Cox, John Borely and Next Wave volunteers Tessa Chong, Sophia Constandine and Alex Hamilton Smith. (Keating 2008).

For the Opening Night Installation the collected materials were piled up against a backdrop of re-cycled and painted billboards and illuminated with theatrical lighting. According to Keating (2008) the pile was formed similar to how 30 to 40 meter trucks dump waste at a landfill. Different materials ’get caught up and tangled amongst one another and poke out as the gravity of the load comes crashing down'.

Opening night installation view, photo Louis Porter (copyright Ash Keating)

From then onwards the space was a beehive of activity in a state of constant flux with invited artists transforming the materials and space which was recorded and video streamed into an exhibition area.

View the evolving installation process

Kay Abude explains that her performance was about

... .physically pushing waste out of the spotlight - the waste that is often hidden from public view and the amount of waste that goes into landfill that most people are unaware of. The performance was about 6-7 minutes long and it involved waste materials scattered on the cobblestone of the Meat Market with a spotlight above focusing on the waste. The spotlight moved 5 times and my task was to repetitively push the waste out of the spotlight back into the darkness out of sight and out of mind.

Working process Kay Abude '2020 in the spotlight'

Photos: Amy Johannes and Ryan L. Foote (copyright Ash Keating)

Working process Kay Abude '2020 in the spotlight'

Photos: Amy Johannes and Ryan L. Foote (copyright Ash Keating)

A VERY TRICKY QUESTION...

At some stage Fayden d'Evie (cited in Keating 2008) poses the question if

...by fetishising the materials, has 2020? subverted its own premise and unwittingly reinforced the desirability of industrial waste? One logic could run: if big waste leads to big possibilities for big art, then maybe bigger waste might lead to bigger possibilities for bigger art?

2020?’s intention was to temporarily intervene the dumping of the materials used in the installation to create awareness of daily excessive industry wastage. When it was decided to allow artists to stake a claim to their works and select materials from the remaining waste/resources most refused! And so - after a short lived existence as art - most of the materials continued their journey to the landfill.

The tension created by exposing the materials as resource/art and then discarding them was a powerful act to raise awareness because it does not allow the reality of the daily burials of clean waste in our landfills be cushioned by a small "rescue operation" or great sales at closing night. Rather, as Bianca Hester pointed out, for artists the challenge is to to radically re-conceptualise and consider a move to a non-material art practice with zero waste. 2020? successfully stirred a "yearning for something better" in artists and audience....reaching towards a 2020 with ZERO WASTE becoming a reality! For that to happen we all need to cooperate...

What can we learn from 2020?, 2008 Ash Keating?

2020?, 2008 raised many questions which should be helpful in finding a way forward. If "creativity" is 'an adaptive feature of normal cognitive functioning that evolved to aid problem solving under conditions of uncertainty" (Heerwagen 2002) then the first step to problem solving is surely the awareness that there is a problem and the belief that a solution can be found. Otherwise, we will be looking at 81,072,593 tonnes of waste per year going into landfills in Australia alone by 2020-21!

Here are a few lessons I have learned from my own trips to the landfill and access to documentation about 2020?, 2008:

More respect for workers at our landfills is warranted not only for the nature of the work they do but also for the risks workers are exposed to and the skills necessary to deal with an increasingly complex mixture of waste. This means that local authorities will need to ask themselves how they can lift the profile of waste management.
When a landfill site is audited the results could be used to educate the public.
Accessing clean waste from a landfill site is a time consuming and expensive undertaking. Collected from multiple sites, clean waste is transported to the landfill and buried. However, if it was to be re-used it would need to be audited and stored before being sold with permission from the original creators of the waste.
Unless making clean waste available as a resource has a measurable value or benefit (as an income or saving) for the industries who create it as well as the local authorities who bury it currently there will be no real incentive to view clean waste as a resource. How can we turn old perceptions on it's head and open up to the possibility of re-using at least that which is desired at a local level to begin with?
For this to happen, how can we, as a community, become more aware about the type and amounts of clean waste that ends up in our landfills and gain access to it at a reasonable cost?
Who could be the possible customers and partners of clean waste reduction in our own community? (Private businesses, NGOs, NPOs and private individuals who would like to support a move towards ZERO WASTE? How can those people become known to those who generate clean waste?
How can Shire Council initiate/support initiatives that create new networks within our town boundary? How can a system be put in place that allows for access to clean waste? Who would manage this.
The need for transport to and from the landfill excludes many who might contribute and benefit. How can we create win-win situations for local people and the town as a whole who will benefit from a cleaner environment and longer life cycle of their landfill?
The need for physical labour makes working with clean waste a time consuming and exhausting exercise. How can the need for physical labour in clean waste management be reduced?
One of the most important questions is: How can "clean industrial waste" re-enter a community without reinforcing the idea that wastefulness is OK?
What existing online sites such as Facebook, twitter or physical building sites could be utilised to trade clean waste - trying to stop any clean waste from going to landfills in the first place?
Communication between authorities, interested parties and the public will be the key to creating ZERO WASTE communities. The challenge will be to go beyond the usual low key educational approaches and instigate a new era of collaborating with the whole community, including the arts. A festival - as demonstrated by Ash Keating - is the perfect opportunity to kick-start the process anywhere ...