"Waste Land"?

PRI’s “The World’s” report on Ordos, China’s attempts to integrate composting toilets into an eco-friendly apartment complex reminded me of Lucy Walker’s Waste Land (2010), which highlights the work of Vik Muniz, an artist who mixes art with social projects. In his “Sugar Children” exhibition, for example, Muniz documents the children of migrant workers on Caribbean sugar plantations. Waste Land focuses on a project attempting to address classism in Brazil, the “biggest problem,” according to Muniz. The film documents his connection with “collectors” at the Jardin Gramacho Landfill near Rio de Janeiro, the so-called “Garbageland” because it’s the largest landfill in the world.

The collectors in this garbage garden sort through the equivalent of 400 thousand people’s trash every day for recylables from all socio-economic classes—rich and poor mix together in the landfill, the film explains, and collectors have formed a union, The Association of Pickers of Jardin Gramacho led by Tiao, to protect them. The 3000 pickers in the union helped build a recycling center, their demonstrators say. To highlight their work, Muniz plans to make portraits of the pickers using items from the landfill, sell them, and give the money back to them. 

The film takes the time to personalize each of the pickers chosen for these portraits. Zumbi, for example, brings books to the Association and forms a library. As Zumbi asserts in support of the union and of Muniz’s project, “we have to think about the future because I don't want my son to be a picker. Although if he is, I'd be very proud... But I'd rather he be a lawyer to represent the pickers, you know.” Valter, an old picker, thinks the photos are important because they will bring the pickers recognition. He argues vehemently for the recycling work he and the other pickers do: “People sometimes say ‘But one single can?’ One single can is of great importance. Because 99 is not 100, and that single one will make the difference.”

Once Muniz’s portraits are underway, the pickers participate, adding recyclables to build found art projects on a massive scale for Muniz to photograph. Muniz recreates classic and modern art, placing pickers in tableau and photographing them before adding garbage and other details. Ultimately, the portraits become part of a exhibition in London. “There’s so much excess, that it becomes art,” Muniz explains. The film ends, however, with postscripts about some of the pickers, “great people that weren’t very lucky.” Zumbi has created a learning center and a library, but Valter has died of lung cancer. Tiao, the leader of the pickers, is now known nationwide in Brazil and could run for president, a talk show host declares, reinforcing the worth of these pickers and their mission.

Roger Ebert compares Waste Land to Scrappers and Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I (2000), “about those who seek their livings in the discards of Paris.” As Ebert argues, “When we see men going through the cans in an alley, some of us tend to distrust and vilify them. They are earning a living. They are providing a service. Incredibly, they're sometimes called lazy. Documentaries like these three help us, perhaps, to more fully appreciate our roles as full-time creators of garbage.”  Waste Land stands out as a personal portrait of the “gleaners” themselves, rather than the artist who seeks to capture them.  The PRI “The World” story also offered a glimpse of  residents’ personal reactions to their new eco-apartment living. In Ordos, unlike the Garbage Garden, the stench scared them away.