JILL PRICE art projects
Where art, ecology and ethics intersect
the REFUSARIUM Manifesto: A Curatorial Statement on the Preservation of Permanent Debris
​Inspired by the long lineage of art manifestos that reject existing social conditions to forge a new visual and moral order, the Refusarium - like the Dadaists who transformed discarded materials into critiques of cultural decay and the Futurists who interrogated the mechanical debris of modern life - treats waste of contemporary consumerism not as simple rubbish, but as historical artifact and political critique. By cleaning beaches and systematically archiving the collected trash, the project inherits the radical spirit of historical manifestos—converting an act of environmental refusal into a deliberate aesthetic and archival intervention that challenges how society produces, forgets, and confronts its own ruin.
We collect because we must face what refuses to die!
I. THE DOGMA OF DISPOSABILITY: We live in the age of the synthetic fossil. Under the violent speed of industrial capitalism, society operates under a profound delusion that an object can be discarded into a void called "away." But as Dr. Jane Bennett professes, there is no away. Garbage is actually the most enduring monument of human architecture.
II. THE ARCHIVE AS UN/MAKING: Born from the exhausting and necessary labour of walking littered shorelines, the Refusarium rejects the artist as producer of commodities, but rather embraces a methodology of UN/making that seeks to help usher in gestures of care and repair. Therefore, this archive is a result of collecting "white trash" found amongst beach grasses, grains of sand and shifting stones that traces the pathways of consumer desire.
III. CO-OPTING THE WHITE CUBE: For centuries, the sterile "white cube" of the art gallery has separated objects from the messy reality of he world to celebrate their aesthetic beauty. By cleaning, categorizing, and displaying white consumer waste in the authoritative museological framework, the Refusarium utilizes the gallery's aesthetic to expose these monochromatic relics as agents of environmental degradation.
IV. THE GEOLOGY OF DEEP TIME: Items included in the Refusarium are not considered as temporary pollution. Categorized as techno-fossils and plastiglomerates, this new sedimentary strata consisting of polymers, synthetic textiles, and vitreous shards will remain embedded in Earth's crust as humans’ permanent signatures.
V. OUR MANDATE: The Refusarium does not seek to beautify, nor offer comfortable solutions. Our mandate is radical preservation:
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To rescue enduring synthetic debris from more natural settings.
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To institutionalize the discarded, elevating trash to the status of historical artifact.
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To make visible the immortality of a convenience culture.
