Project for Gutter Trash

cast iron, polyurethane paint, epoxy adhesive
2011

An increase in transient populations in the city, due to unstable jobs that don’t pay a living wage and an increase in unhoused people for whom home ownership is an economic impossibility, has meant reduced single-family dwelling and increased rental accommodation, resulting in a decline in neighborhood identification and a sense of rightful belonging, particularly in the disadvantaged parts of the city. Consequently, the general treatment of streets and neighborhoods has severely diminished. Citizens without a sense of ownership or meaningful participation in community has led to an overall decline in civility and civic responsibility; people without a sense of commitment to where they live and work come to regard their environment as a foreign territory that does not take their presence seriously. Non-property owners see the care and maintenance of the city as something to be provided by the municipality through property taxes, which they don’t pay; providing workable infrastructure and routine maintenance are necessary services the city will take care of. But a reduced tax base means that city services will also be reduced, and street-cleaning is not high on the list of urgent requirements for a well-functioning city. Consumer packaging gets thrown down as someone else’s problem on someone else’s property, and someone else’s work. This magical thinking is nowhere so evident as in light-industrial areas, even when they includes residential properties; leased businesses with absentee landlords take a limited view of their responsibilities to the neighborhoods they work inside of, and consequently these areas are regarded as free-fire zones when it comes to trashing. Someone who wouldn’t clean out their car into the gutter on a residential street think nothing of dumping it out in an industrial zone.

For this project, molds are taken from found objects in gutters for casting in iron, painted to resemble the original. A 5-inch long rod on the underside is glued into a hole bored into the gutter concrete, using industrial adhesive, to create a permanent marker and a mnemonic.