Trash Talk

Catalog description

Examines the possibilities inherent in 'theorizing from the gutter'; looking at the world not from a lofty 'Ivory Tower' but from the slime, the muck, the dumpster, the trash heap, the wasteland, the discarded and the downtrodden. Takes its theoretical framework from a radical 1960s manifesto called SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas and from the French feminist philosophies of Julia Kristeva, who theorized the abject as a relationship with the grotesque that reveals the deep-seated fear of death. Uses these theoretical positions to examine trash, both abstractly and literally. Works through a variety of concepts ranging from actual trash, garbage, waste, toxic sludge, pollution and dirt, and tackles more abstract notions of trash such as the knowledge produced on the fringe in circuses, amusement parks, 'trailer trash' zones, freak shows and the bodies of those marked as 'Other' or different.