Rubbish Pendulum

Rubbish Pendulum / Video / Brydee Rood 2012 The Waste Whisperer Series / Filmed at Recology Waste Transfer Station in San Francisco. There was something very emotional about this heaving, moving flux of garbage, this tide of materials. In any given moment there were commercial trucks dumping mammoth-heaps, individuals pulling in and fleetingly evacuating trunk-fulls of perished, forgotten deemed useless belongings… A small pile appears at my feet it’s riddled with the familiarity of someone’s lifetime – reduced to being rummaged over by one of the Recology workers deftly rescuing the best reusable bits. Two seconds later a ravishing mother load mass of steaming debris is quivering a few meters in front of me. A lively forklift shifts in for the take and like the reverse cutting of a birthday cake, makes off in hasty retreat with its newly shuffled mountain, leaving behind a vertical rubbish shelf jiggling before my eyes. The vision settles and I spy a single swinging object, the case end of a measuring tape dangling amidst the chaos, it's long arm of inches tangled far beyond reach, the tension and motion causing a pendulum swing, I was captivated! This brief encounter has become a short looping video and sound piece titled ‘Rubbish Pendulum’ a hypnotic meditation on waste. 

Thank-you Recology for granting me precious scavenging rites. 
Kia ora Fulbright NZ and The Wallace Arts Trust 

Images courtesy of Brydee Rood