The New York Department of Sanitation has transformed their relationship with the community through art and popular representation. They have used these techniques to enlist cooperation from the citizens of New York and create a more positive image of sanitation workers and the Department as a whole.
Recycling campaigns serve as an example of the Department’s goals to transform citizens’ sense of responsibility and enlist their cooperation. Several images in the archive depict images of these campaigns. For the panel, “Department of Sanitation Parade Float, Clean-Up Coney Island” and “Sweep Magazine Articles, Summer, 1966, Volume 8, Number 2” will be used as examples of popular representation.
“Department of Sanitation Parade Float, Clean-Up Coney Island” is an image of a float from the 1930’s depicting several DSNY popular images. Featured, is a White Wing with an original carry can posed in front of an archway labeled "Gateway to Health." There is also a garbage can labeled “Paper,” which most likely represents an early effort to encourage recycling, and a sign labeled, "Clean Up Coney Island 30,000 Cuts Treated Last Year!” The presence of a White Wing and the sign, “Gateway to Health,” reference the original Department of Street Cleaning and George Waring’s efforts to revitalize sanitation in New York. These images promote pride in the Department’s history and reinforce the idea that the Department of Sanitation is essential to keeping the city a safe and healthy place to live. The bin labeled “Paper” and the phrase, "Clean Up Coney Island” reinforces the citizens’ personal responsibility to keep the city clean. The phrase “30,000 Cuts Treated Last Year” refers to the danger inherent in individuals not cleaning up after themselves (the cuts most likely refer to accidents caused by glass left on the beach).
The image of “Sweep Magazine Articles, Summer, 1966, Volume 8, Number 2” (only one page of the two articles will be used) picture new chartreuse waste baskets with the cartoon character, "Phil D. Basket." The articles reflect a renewed effort by the DSNY to encourage the citizens of New York to help keep the streets clean, and to transform their ideas about personal responsibility. The creation of sanitation characters and the beautification of waste receptacles combat the community’s tendency to consider waste and waste disposal services taboo and invisible. These popular representations work to transform apathy into an attitude of active accountability.
Art is also an important tool for transforming the community’s perception of sanitation workers. Art further encourages interdepartmental pride and prestige. The panel will show a picture of Mierle Ukele’s mirrored truck, Social Mirror, in order to illustrate how art has worked to meet these goals.
Social Mirror reflects the audience back onto itself. The truck and its workers are no longer invisible, or left solely with the weight of the city's waste. The mirror reminds the viewer that it is their garbage filling the trucks. Mierle Ukele’s art promotes pride in the Department and the community’s sense of accountability.
The panel will also illustrate the transformative power of recycling. New York serves as an example of the ingenious and unusual ways people recycle. For the exhibit, it will be important to showcase how mongo and freeganism transform ideas of recycling and waste in a consumer culture. The specific image for this subject has not yet been chosen.
In speaking of Mierle Ukele’s work, Suzi Gablik says that it has the power to “transform the alien audience into the empathic audience” (1991:73). She further argues that such work allows “one to become a healer in all one’s activities, harmonizing the needs of the individual with the needs of the community” (1991:74). These phrases sum up the theme of trash and transformation, and the goals behind popular representation, art, and alternative modes of recycling. All of these systems create a sense of pride, gratitude, and ownership in the Department of Sanitation, for the citizens and the sanitation workers.
SOURCES
Gablik, Suzi. The Reenchantment of Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991.