The Waste Archive
by
Jesus Meseguer, Javier Arias,
Mireia Ferri, and Connie Meseguer
LOCATION: ALICANTE, SPAIN



The Waste Archive project reuses local debris to reinterpret traditional Spanish furniture. These common imageries are subverted to critically comment on our ecological impact. El botijo, the earthenware jug used as a container for water, is now materialized with an earth-like stratum obtained from urban sewage treatment that unearths the invisible processes contained in our cities’ water. La vitrina, the cabinet is crystallized by moulds of an HEB beam remnant and orange tree branches that refer to a temporary interlude after junk accumulation and before its dissolution in a furnace. El brasero, a table brazier where olive residues are overlapped to cohabit: toxic waste from olive oil industry, discharged tree trunks, pruned branches and olive bone ashes. Adherences that unveil the anthropized lifeline of olive trees. Waste-matter displays trauma processes diluted in their form, texture, colour and odour. An aesthetic revision becomes a mean to unveil hidden realities. We can become active subjects of this shared emergency if we deconstruct junk as something generic, extrinsic and finite. If the discarded resurfaces into the ordinary, we reappropriate our own ecological trace. What we require is abjection without cleansing, a melancholia without mourning.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Jesus Meseguer ↩, Javier Arias, Mireia Ferri, and Connie Meseguer