COMPOST AND OTHER MEANS OF ASSEMBLY
Centre for Contemporary Art U-Jazdowski Castle
Warsaw, Poland
2021
Compost as a tool for the radical imagination is situated in care, community, and the commons. Through composting we return the surplus of our organic waste to earth in order to regenerate soil and local environments. Compost is soil produced from garden or food scraps. The nutrient rich humus returns vital compounds back to the earth, enhances the capacity of the ground to retain moisture and encourages participation in life-giving and generative systems that support plants and other smaller organisms. Like compost, our work of healing and restoring our relationship with earth for generations to come is non-linear – it requires the coming together of multiple temporalities. When we compost, we imagine how future generations can learn from our acts to build generative relationships with the living systems that work ceaselessly to nourish and nurture our wellbeing.
The artist-led gathering to build the compost bin took place on a mild and muddy spring day. This time of year, the area was sparse with little grass coverage and large acacia trees watching over us. The assembly was located alongside the institution, close to the pizza oven and recycling bins. Our group gathered on the grounds of the institution to co-create the compost bins. In a procession we pulled the building materials, benches, and tools from the laboratory and brought them to the site. When we arrived, we found a large heap contained the leaves and small twigs from around the institution’s grounds. Rather than driving the leaves away, the grounds men consolidated the surplus, and allocated it for the compost.
Once the site was prepared, everyone took a board and began to add their contribution to the hexagonal structures. As a participant in the process, I grabbed the wooden plank from the pile and passed it to empty hands. When there were no more planks in the reserve, we began to build. As I placed my plank to co-create this form, it felt as if time slowed down. The form spiraled upwards until a container emerged from our repetitive acts. To ensure that the compost bin would stay intact, the realization team supported our labor by fixing a few vertical beams to the structure. In a matter of minutes, the hexagonal forms stood upright. The compost bins were ready to transform surplus into humus.
When the compost bins were completed, we entered the unknown of how to sustain and maintain our engagement with lively matter. The bins became a frame for transformative processes to emerge both in nature's cycles and through the institution’s commitment and care for more-than-human-worlds. One bin was designated to hold a reserve of carbon rich matter such as leaves, sticks and nutshells. While the other bin was fortified for the compost process to occur through alternating layers of carbon rich-leaves and nitrogen rich-biomass from food scraps and organic waste. Today, the bins foster the ongoing collaboration between the institution, visitors, and future residents. So long as the bins remain, they remind us of the better worlds possible.