errant bodies | e+l | active circulation

Attempting to probe urban infrastructures necessarily requires engaging the uneven paths of urban development and maneuvering performatively in relation to a given city. This often involves contacting city offices and meeting local officials, managers and technicians. For a project in Curitiba, Brazil in 2006, this took shape in relation to the city’s recycling program and specifically how this relates to “unofficial” waste collectors living in barrio communities and functioning within an alternative economy. The collector’s labor is very often controlled by a “trash mafia” who provide housing and protection in exchange for services. We researched this community and culture of trash and recycling by shadowing its movements. This involved building a cart similar to those used by the trash collectors and circulating through the city with the intention of collecting discarded wood. The cart was built in collaboration with local craftsman and aimed to symbolically intervene within this circuit of trash collecting which, from our perspective, has become normalized and thereby relies upon the cheap and partially forced labor of an impoverished community. The cart thus functioned literally as a vehicle for creating interactions and raised discussion about the issue, which was finally presented at a local gallery space, along with additional works and artifacts from our investigation, such as a table built from the collected wood and used for meals served during the exhibition. This work was developed in collaboration with Octávio Camargo, and was part of the project Surface Tension_Curitiba.