Agnès Varda, director of the amazing documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), has a new film out—what appears to be a fantastical, memoir-documentary about her life as a New Wave pioneer, wife and lover of Jacques Demy and all-around badass.  Here’s the trailor.

And here’s  A.O. Scott’s piece on the project and its creator. In it, he calls Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse “a personal and philosophical inquiry into the practice of gathering what has been discarded or passed over.” And it is. Because Varda made it. In France. If anyone else had tackled the project, it would have been a movie about freegans and politics and all that is wonky and dull and without the fun of a wacky French/Belgian woman inserting herself into the action as a very present narrator. In short, it would have been no fun at all and noone would remember that in France, they have a crazy law that requires farmers to open their farms up to the public after harvest to collect leftover food. I can’t wait to see what the rest of her life/career was like.

Anyway, since this post is only tangentially trash-related, I’m throwing in this link from a few months back on urban gleaning.  Check it out now if you missed it then.

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about this guy David de Rothschild and his forthcoming voyage to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on his forthcoming plastic bottle vessel, the Plastiki.

David de Rothschild

The boat and journey are loosely modeled on the adventures of Thor Heyderdahl, that salty Norweigian who sailed great oceanic distances on a flimsy-looking balsawood raft in the style of a Peruvian pae-pae.

Press coverage of this venture has been a joy to read. De Rothschild, in case you didn’t know, is an heir. In addition to personal wealth, he also has a posh British accent, rugged facial hair and his own eco TV show on the Sundance Channel.

According to Treehugger: “De Rothschild is a fascinating eco-warrior. He is gorgeous, rich and extremely eligible. “

GOOD published this illuminating Q&A along with a sexy photo of de Rothschild sprawled in a bed of plastic. The New York Times did a thing. Even The New Yorker ran a profile.

But my favorite piece so far and by far—judged on both tone and informational content—is this SF Weekly blog post. Yay snark. Enjoy.

Oh, and not surprisingly, this guy has a sizable YouTube pressence.

As part of their supercool series on music, uncomsuption posted a link today to the site cassette tape culture, a clearinghouse of upcyling ideas for old tapes. As it happens, I’ve been thinking a lot about cassettes lately—in the context of what is happening now in Iran.

tapes. tapes, tapes

I saw a great documentary once—on TV of course so I have no idea what it was called or how to track it down again—about new technologies and human rights. It ended on this very upbeat note saying that little camcorders were going to put an end to human rights violations because anyone could sneak one into a scuffle or stoning, turning every citizen into a potential reporter.

Behind every modern uprising, the documentary postured, lay a technological advancement. Leading up to the ‘79 revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini built his following by recording propaganda speeches on cassettes that were smuggled into Iran and passed around from person to person. Tienanmen Square was the fax revolution. And since then we have seen the text message and cell phone camera equivalents around the world. And here we are, 30 years after the Islamic Revolution, learning the true value of new media.

“So you know what Twitter is, now, right?” I asked my father on the phone this morning.  He lives in Tehran.

“Of course,” he said. “Hillary used it to send us a message.”

“And you know how it works?”

“BBC and Voice of America have been telling us how it works.”

So there you have it. Last week, he needed help to open his webmail account. This week, my dad understands the political implications of Twitter. And more importantly, my generation understands how to use it. And how YouTube and Facebook and camera phones and text messages all work.

Like everyone else I know, with or without family on the front lines, I am glued to the internet: hungry for any scrap of information or better yet context to the post-election melee and awed by the bravery of those on the streets.

Browsing these nostalgic reimaginings of cassettes makes me want to channel this nervous energy into an art project: a giant sculpture of the Ayatollah made of old cassettes with tangled strands of tape to represent his imposing eyebrows. It would have a sound element, this multimedia work of mine, a warbly cassette recording of Khomeini’s speech to the women who participated in the revolution (thanking them kindly for their participation and asking them politely to resume their places as subservient members of society). And I would call the piece “Be careful what you wish for.”

How cute is this? Trash for Teaching, a Los Angeles based NGO, provide classrooms with trash that kids can transform into art, while learning all about the important stuff. Reminds me of my kindergarden days, where those carton rolls at the center of paper rolls could be used for virtually anything (these days I just recycle them, being old and narrow minded). Why isn’t this just mandatory everywhere?

Also, for $350, Trash for Teaching will entertain 15 kids at a birthday party. You supply tables and space, they do the rest.

Upcycled duck, you can buy these as kits

For those who can’t get enough of shock in the face of the plastic et al. that floats around in our seas, I highly recommend the UN Environment Programme’s recent report Marine Litter – A Global Challenge. The report spells it all out pretty clearly – there’s trash in all our seas. We don’t know how much it is, or exactly how damaging it is, but we know that it’s terrible.

The report makes a number of recommendations, such as the ever needed raised awareness (garbloggers 4-ever!), but the significant components if you ask me are spelled enforced legislation and incentives not to dump in the sea (or the rivers that flow out to sea). Enforcement is not only punishment though, its also about preventive measures, such as ship and industry control. I. e., governments must step in and force the private sector to behave when the invisible hand fails to do so.

Lastly, a new lovely abbreviation (actually a combination of two): The NOWPAP MALITA (The North West Pacific Marine Litter Activity).

Eh, anyone who knows anything about mining trash, please explain this? The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday 6-3 in favor of a mining company who wants to dump 4.5 million tonnes of what’s known as coal slurry into Lower Slate Lake, Alaska.  The slurry is expected to annihilate life in these waters. Wikipedia says the following about coal slurry:

High-profile disasters associated with these slurry impoundments have called into question their safety. In February 1972, three dams holding a mixture of coal slurry and water in Logan County, West Virginia failed in succession: 130 million gallons of toxic water were released in the Buffalo Creek Flood.

Out of a population of 5,000 people, 125 people were killed, 1,121 were injured, and over 4,000 were left homeless. The flood caused 50 million dollars in damages. Despite evidence of negligence, the Pittston Company, which owned the compromised dam, called the event an “Act of God.”

Seriously, how flawed is the Clean Water Act if these things are ok? (And sure, this dumping is planned, so the flooding part isn’t going to happen, but its toxxxic man!)

Couldn’t fly off for three nights to the UK without bringing back a pic of those handy dustbins on which there are some metal thingies for you to stub your cigarette before throwing it away where it belongs, could I? No, I couldn’t.

Yes, we paint our dustbins with gold, because trash is holy

Sulphur Blue Smeck in mixed junk by Michelle Stitzlein

For anyone in, around or headed towards Salem, Mass., there’s a new trash art exhibit up at the Peabody Essex Museum. I don’t know about you, but I get a kick out of museum plaques that list “mixed junk” as an art medium.

Trash Menagerie presents over 30 improbable works of art created from things most of us simply throw away. This playful and poignant exhibition challenges visitors to think differently about the creative potential lurking in everyday objects. From an iridescent trout made from 70 different pieces of refuse to a flock of cheery birds made from tin cans, Trash Menagerie explores animals imaginatively made from recycled rubbish. The exhibition features hands-on activities, such as a trash collage magnet board and weekend art drop-in activities, to encourage visitors of all ages think creatively about trash in the museum and beyond. Trash Menagerie is on view in the Peabody Essex Museum’s interactive Art & Nature Center June 20, 2009, through May 2010.

This week in trash news:

• A trash bag kills whales off the coast of South Carolina;
• Also in South Carolina, the unemployed find temp work cleaning up nuclear waste;
• We are reminded that garbage soup swirls in the Atlantic ocean, too;
• Vermonters recycle a restaurant;
• Frenchies produce an average of 7 tons of trash per person per year; and
• The UK explores the power of poo.