Waste is a part of life. From birth until death, humans use and discard in an endless cycle of consumption. This project analyses the lives, deaths, and rebirths of commodities and the impacts of consumerist culture through the process of upcycling enervated commodity waste into new objects using hand-making techniques. These works aim to project visions of revival through the upcycling process, and to deliver a personal apology to the Earth for the damage I have caused through my consumption. The title of this project, It’s Trash, is a tongue in cheek reference to both the material that makes the object and the system that produces the waste.
This project visualises a reality of perpetuity through consumption; where the “dead” and discarded object persists far longer than the consumer through its imperishable material matter, creating a monument to the Anthropocene epoch. Using trashed commodities comprised mostly of synthetic matter, I engage in processes of material transmutation, stripping waste objects back to raw material which is then transformed into an object. The process I undertake to upcycle waste commodities can be distilled into a cycle: Consume>Exhaust>Refine>Create. I acquire and use (Consume) the commodity until it can no longer serve its original purpose (Exhaust). I then begin the transformation process by changing the object into raw material (Refine) to then turn into new object (Create). The exhausted objects in question are either my own personal commodities or objects discarded by friends and colleagues, and overwhelmingly consist of destroyed fast fashion textiles such as socks and leggings and single use/packaging plastics. These objects can no longer serve their original purposes, and without processes of upcycling, can only become landfill. Many of these items can be recycled industrially, but the methods are not accessible and are often costly or involve harsh chemical processes, rendering the process moot from both a practical and an environmental perspective. Using Igor Kopytoff’s theory of commodity-as-process and intersecting it with Doreen Massey’s theory of place-as-process, I create a new dialogue of politics, place, and matter. By creating new objects from synthetic trash, I reduce the amount of imperishable material being sent to landfill and, subsequently, reduce the environmental impact of my consumption. Both the process of material refinement from repudiated objects and the process of ascribing new purpose to worthless objects through transformation of form criticise the insidious nature of capitalism and its machinations of consumerism, and how they have adversely limited our ability to rot. This project addresses the materials that cannot decompose, and the ways my consumption of these materials alters connections with commodities and environment.

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