Museum of Garbage: An Exhibition of Waste in Istanbul by FLYING Roots, 2015, Cukurcuma
The project was partially funded by European Cultural Foundation, DAAD and UdK Berlin.
FLYING roots: [Olivia Traut, Jessica Sim], Paul Brownlee, Stephanie Kuhlmann, Judith Jung, Gabrielle Reeves.
About
The MUSEUM OF GARBAGE is an initiative by a curatorial collective, FLYING roots, bringing thrown-away items from the streets and households of Istanbul, into the space of the gallery. The exhibition was composed of piles, mappings, and assemblages of waste-objects, and also included a pop-up cafe and conversation hub. It derived from a concern for the ecology of waste management in Istanbul and a questioning of the role of the individual consumer within this complexity. Objects of waste - compostables, one-time-usables, and also reusables - change in functionality and value. They are objects produced, consumed and disposed - often forgotten, sometimes collected, and eventually transformed. The MUSEUM OF GARBAGE was a re-positioning of waste-items, gathered from the streets of Çukurcuma and housed in the space of a gallery. Changing the context, does not necessarily transform the items into a purely aesthetic form to be perceived as such, but rather bears the chance for them to be viewed from a different perspective, promoting a re-contemplation of their nature, use and consumption.
At the exhibition, visitors found themselves among carefully-stacked piles of things dis-posed, a mapping of Çukurcuma’s re-collected street-litter, and three-dimensional visualisations revealing the lives and cycles of expended items. Visitors were also invited to make their own contributions, together creating a momentary archive of the city’s discarded pieces.
Collaborative Art Projects is one of the formats for CIRCUIT to engage its community within its processes succeeding in “sustainable creativity” and also to invite an exchange of resources or knowledge.
