Year Five Final: Vacation Series
It all started with garbage. Actually it did not even begin with garbage but with a whiff of a smell so horrid I could not stay for the duration of my history lecture. It was the aroma of the dump, located in North Glenmore and it was a foul time for that smell to praise the campus with its presence, because it ruined my day. The smell of the dump travelling from such a far off location made me think about the theme “garbage.” It is everywhere: an uncontrollable mass of consumption which will eventually take over the world. We hide it, burn it, bury it, and toss it in rivers, in forests, in oceans, in cities, in parks, and places anywhere that is not in our own hands. While thinking about how much garbage is thrown out during a single day I also began to question what will happen when the space runs out? What will our planet look like if garbage had no where to hide? Would we abandon and lock down certain areas? Would we live with it? Would we run away? I wanted to create a world based on garbage. So I began to digitally experiment. I brought in a photograph of a plaza in Pizza Italy, a popular spot across from a river and filled it with garbage. I then hypothesized if this once beautiful area was now filled with such wretched objects and smells I erased all ideas of human activity and gave the scene a sense of abandonment. I added a lawn chair, a table, and a martini glass, as an ironical twist to the scenery to invite the viewer to sit and enjoy, like if they were on vacation.
Although we both know –I and the viewer – neither of us would ever sit nor enjoy the scenery.
