The Assembly of Trash: Installation and Salon

An installation and salon about experimental forms of engagement with the waste stream. Curated by Curt Gambetta, Reyner Banham Fellow, featuring work by students from the Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning (B/a+p). http://www.ap.buffalo.edu/sap/news/index.asp April 14-May 19 CEPA Underground Gallery 716 Main St. Buffalo NY M-F 9am-5pm, Sat 12-4pm Waste is invisible until it becomes a problem. Large scale systems of sanitation and waste management seek to contain and enclose problems associated with waste, removing it from contact with urban life. Because it is volatile and long-lasting, waste successfully undermines its management, filling the air with odor or, in the case of older landfills, leaching into the water supply. Who or what is responsible for these and other unintended consequences of waste making and disposal? Individual consumers? Trucks? Waste management corporations? Garbage bins? Landfill liner? Global markets for recyclables? Manufacturers of consumables? The water table? The question of whether waste is a public matter of concern or not emerges out of ruptures and conflicts within this heady mix of inert and volatile materials, human protagonists and large scale systems. Rather than fortify these points of weakness, we propose a number of incisions into already unstable components of the waste stream. Otherwise personal or invisible aspects of waste making and decomposition are brought to collective scrutiny and sensation, allowing new public rituals and spaces of engagement with trash to emerge around air quality monitoring, composting and the act of throwing garbage into a bin. April 14th: Salon and Opening Salon 1 Objects: Experience and Engagement Typically confined to the background of daily life, objects and large scale infrastructures are today increasingly acknowledged as deeply intertwined with social experience. By revisiting the experience and construction of daily rituals and habits through an engagement with physical things, what questions might this engagement raise about the terrain of design practice today? 9-10:45am Jordan Geiger (B/a+p) Adrian Blackwell (Daniels School of Architecture, University of Toronto) Moderator: Dennis Maher (B/a+p) 11:15am-1pm Brian Lonsway (Syracuse University School of Architecture) Curt Gambetta (B/a+p) Moderator: Hadas Steiner (B/a+p) Salon 2 Techniques: The Aesthetics of Communication Since in the 19th century, waste has been understood as a problem of information. Who will manage information, who will gather it, and who it is communicated to? Given the complexity of information about waste infrastucture, what techniques might be used to make sense of it in order to produce consciousness or political engagement? 2-3:45pm Rosten Woo (CalArts, Los Angeles and co-founder, Center for Urban Pedagogy, New York) Julian Montague (Julian Montague Projects, Buffalo) Moderator: Kenny Cupers (B/a+p) 4:15-6pm Juliette Spertus (Fasttrash.org, New York) Katy Dugaan-Haas (Sustainability Program Development& Education, Modern Waste Corporation, Buffalo) Moderator: Martha Bohm (B/a+p) 6-7pm Opening Reception