ABSTRACT
Utopia is a place foreign and remote, a point of destination and a reward after a long journey riddled with obstacles and difficulties, whereas Dystopia is usually the point of departure, the dreadful place one abhors and longs to leave behind. In the case of rubbish, however, the opposite is true. Waste, also an eager traveller (Hodding Carter 2006; George 2008; Hohn 2011; Nagle 2013; Rogers 2005; Royte 2005; Thomson 2009) and a global phenomenon, moves from ‘utopia’ (the ‘happy’ land of consumerism and affluence) to dystopia. In fact, trash carries dystopia within, is dystopia, particularly when allowed to grow and to pile up on dumps and landfills (Boo 2014; Engler 2004; Humes 2012; Rathje and Murphy 2001; Urrea 1996). In this chapter, I reflect upon refuse – and the journey that leads to (dystopic) monumentality – as represented in the work and installations of street painter Francisco de Pájaro, and media artist Daniel Canogar. The two Spanish artists do not work in isolation, as the following pages try to show, but dialogue with a number of international artists and installations, among them, HA Schult, Chris Jordan, Vic Muniz, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, ‘My Dog Sighs’, ‘Filthy Luker’, and the TrashCam Project. The fact that trash travels, for example, is equally relevant to de Pájaro, Jordan, Canogar, and Schult, but the persistently nomadic nature of rubbish impacts the four artists differently. Jordan and Canogar look at trash as it arrives at transfer stations and recycling centres, and go through the sorting process, whereas Schult likes to conceive of trash as an eternal traveller and even an unwelcomed refugee, forced to move from place to place. De Pájaro, on the other hand, looks at rubbish well before it leaves the urban topography. The type of refuse that ignites his imagination is not the apocalyptic vastness and trash accumulation that happens in transfer stations, recycling centres, and landfills (as is the case with Jordan and Canogar), but the humble piece of rubbish that pauses briefly right at the beginning of its long journey, and provisionally litters sidewalks and street corners. However, no matter how different their approach to trash, or the nature of their artistic manipulation of all things discarded, de Pájaro and Canogar, no less than Jordan and Schult, effectively complicate the routine perception of trash as a dystopic reality. They also are quick to acknowledge that, independently from the fact that the meaning of trash changes when art comes into play, in the ‘real
world’ trash means, and is, very much the same, wherever it goes, and wherever one finds it. It is a global phenomenon – as is the cycle of production and consumerism – and the sameness/globalism of it also plays an important role in de Pájaro’s and Canogar’s approaches to the discarded. ‘El arte es basura’ (art is trash) is Francisco de Pájaro’s signature, which he scribbles, graffiti-like, on the pieces he creates with the help of trash bags and old cardboard boxes. His art pieces were first seen in the crowded streets in Barcelona, but later also on the busy pavements of London and New York. De Pájaro, an artist from Extremadura, Spain, soon became deeply disenchanted with the exclusionary elitism of the art world. As he pointed out in a recent interview,
I started painting on the street because the art galleries of Barcelona closed [their] doors [on me]; it was very difficult to evolve with limited financial means. Expressing myself on the trash gives me endless elements to paint, without having the obligation to maintain or market the finished work. You paint it, leave it in the street and keep going until you get tired. There’s nothing like painting on the streets for freedom of expression.
