MAKING A MUSEUM: Materializing Regimes of Value with the NYC Department of Sanitation

First, a huge thanks to Robin for setting this up for us. The Emerald Society was incredibly hospitable and welcoming to us, despite the fact that they all somehow got the impression that we were Robin's "Staff" and "Assistants." Robin's presentation was truly fascinating and "brief", and was the perfect intro and way to start off the meeting. (I do hope that she will post it or maybe give us access to it somehow - I think there is information in it that would be relevant for everyone to peruse).

The Emerald Society meeting was quite an epxerience! The overall structure (for those that weren't there) is that there is generally some socializing as people are arriving, and then the meeting is called to order to discuss business items; roll is taken and the president of the society then goes through each item of the meeting agenda. Once all the business has been attended to, the meal and more socializing commence. The "business" portion of the meeting took about an hour, though might actually boil down to about 40 minutes if all the comic relief were removed. Then again, it makes the "business" way more fun!

I enjoyed everything about the Emerald Society meeting, and was incredibly touched by several things. I definitely felt first and foremost an incredibly strong sense of community. The Emerald Society is very dedicated to supporting the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and I was incredibly impressed with the amount of funds that "Shevy", an officer (forgive my terrible memory but I forget his exact position) of the Society, was able to raise by participating in a cross-country motorcycle ride for the Foudnation. He gave quite a long, but very very touching speech. The Society also has a scholarship fund/competition for children of Emerald Society members who are entering high school. Additionally, I was also struck by how many retirees were both present and actively involved in the Emerald Society. Despite several jokes during Robin's presentation that many of the retirees were probably around in 1909 to use the first sanitation carts, it was clear that the Society deeply respects its proverbial elders. Much of the "business" of the meeting was actually quite interesting: there were reports from several people about things like updates from the Parade commission for the 2008 St. Patty's Day Parade (which we were generously invited to march in) to community events to recognition of new members to even a moment of silence for sick family members. There were probably other important business items I could mention here, but I think the second round of beers potentially wiped that out...

I sat at a table with a couple of the chiefs, who could probably quit their jobs and do stand-up for a living. However, I was able to glean some very interesting information about the nature of these benevolent societies. Though the meeting was physically in Queens, the members present actually come from all five boroughs. Since space rental is at a premium these days, the decision of where to host the meeting often rests on the cheapest place. Still, there was a great turnout given that one can't really get to Maspeth by public transportation. The meetings happen monthly expect for a hiatus during the summer when things are particularly slow. There seems to be many of these societies, and apparently an Islamic group was recently founded. So I am looking forward to seeing how other societies conduct themselves and what "business" they each value most.

Overall, the mood of the evening was very light and I think it was both informative and entertaining for everyone who went. I am very much looking forward to next week's meeting! Everyone, please add many comments to fill in the gaps - I'm sure there are some interesting conversations people had last night that need to be shared!

I experienced something interesting today that I thought I'd share with all of you. It was my first day of work study with America Reads, a tutoring program designed by Bill Clinton, and I'm assigned to work with a kindergarten class in Brooklyn. Anyways, during recess time I was sitting on the bench watching the kids when I happened to overhear one of my students say to another, "Hey, let's play Garbage!" My ears perked up a bit as I have now been trained to seek out trash related subjects, as I'm sure the rest of you have, so I asked him, "How do you play Garbage?" The student replied to me, "All you have to do is go around the playground and find wrappers or leaves or anything that doesn't belong on the ground and you stick it in the trash." He said this with such a tone as if, "Duh, isn't it obvious?" So I said to him, "Wow, that's very responsible of you. So you like to pretend you work for the Sanitation Department?" He replied enthusiastically, "Yeah! I love it, we have so much fun trying to find trash!" And as he said this he grabbed his friend and screamed, "Come on! Let's go look over there!" I couldn't help but chuckle to myself as I saw him and the other student running around the playground, making it a bit cleaner for everyone around them. Any thoughts on the innocence of these kids and the way they view trash and/or sanitation workers?

So I might have horribly miscategorized this, but I'll give it a shot.

The Columbian Association meeting was really fun. Just like the Emerald Society, everyone was really welcoming and friendly. Some differences I noticed: I think there were a couple of women at the Emerald Society meeting. From what I saw at the Columbian, and from what the guys told me, there weren't any women in their association. I'd assume there are some Italian-American women who work in sanitation and was curious why none were members of this association. The meeting at the Columbian ran a little shorter than the Emerald Society -- people did linger, but the Irish guys seemed to stick around a little longer at their meeting. (Except for me at the Columbian society -- Steve was late picking me up because of a huge pileup on the Whitestone Bridge, so I got to hang out with Jimmy until they were locking the front door and all but three guys had gone home!) Maybe it was just me, but the tone at the Columbian meeting seemed a little bit more serious than at the Emerald Society. Both groups were a lot of fun and had a great sense of humor, it just seemed like the tone was a bit more serious at the Columbian Association. Could just be personality differences in whoever's conducting, I guess.

The guys talked about marching in the Columbus Day Parade this weekend, and expressed a lot of pride both in being with Sanitation and in being Italian-Americans. There was a lot of focus on family feeling, family and friendly associations. I'd love to see the essays their kids are going to submit on "What it means to me to be an Italian-American" (cash prize: a $500 scholarship, and I also thought it was hilarious that the president cautioned against any parental essay writing or cut-and-pasting). I met a lot of guys who would refer me to one of their friends and say "you should interview him!" but of the three guys I asked, they all laughed wryly and said something like "no way -- too many stories" when I asked them if they'd want to be interviewed. They were all really open and friendly to talk to, though. A couple of my favorites were Jimmy, the cook, and Tony DeSantis, the past president. Jimmy was 20 years on the job in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant and had some crazy stories about his experiences. (He also sent me home with extra meatballs :) He said this was new to him being portrayed as the good guy because "I'm used to looking like a bad guy. Don't I look like I should be on the Sopranos? Bada-bim!" He also played on a Sanitation softball team and met John DeLury at a softball awards ceremony (if I remember right). Tony invited my husband (Steve) and me to his house on Staten Island -- he was also really engaging to talk to.

Imagine you live at the foot of the Triborough Bridge, next to the N line, along the M60 route (which goes to La Guardia), and just past a series of bars, restaurants, convenience shops, gas stations, bakeries, and laundromats. Oh, and also right by Grand Central Parkway, which is a big loud freeway. You're at a nexus of activity -- but only sort of: most of the people are in transit to somewhere else, either via bus, subway, car, taxi, or foot.

This is my immediate neighborhood in Astoria, New York. It's filthy. But if you go three blocks to the north, the houses and yards get bigger, there are more trees, and far less bustle -- and things are cleaner. A lot cleaner. To the west and east, the change is similar, though not quite as dramatic. Ditto for the south, as long as you don't follow the elevated subway line directly. (The subway line, because it attracts businesses and people, is also quite a magnet for litter.) The most obvious reason my particular neighborhood is so dirty is simple: littering has no direct consequences for the litterer. There's plenty of space under the bridge, or under the subway line, or alongside the highway. If you throw trash in one of these places, you can assume no one will yell at you. And you'd be right. The area is riddled with interstitials between private clean-up and public collection. Spaces that, because no one feels a responsibility for them, no one (seemingly on principle) will clean up. The neighborhood has a very sturdy ethic: we will keep the interior of our apartments clean and everything else can screw-off.

“Hey, lets play garbage!” one schoolyard boy said to the other. A curious teacher’s aid asks the boys how the game is played. Enthusiastically they reply "All you have to do is go around the playground and find wrappers or leaves or anything that doesn't belong on the ground and you stick it in the trash." They agreed that they enjoyed playing ‘garbage’ and that they pretend that they are members of the department of sanitation. The teacher’s aid looks on with a grin and delighted in the way these boys view the hard working members of our cities finest sanitation engineers.

I spent the last week going on daily mongo* hunts. The results yielded many choice items, several of which are now decorating my apartment, and more importantly, changed the way I look at garbage and the city as a whole. I have learned that mongo is a dynamic cultural phenomenon, integral to the system of waste disposal in New York City.
The methodology I used for this project was simple. I kept a daily mongo diary of what I found, what I brought home, and what I left on the street, and I took digital photographs to correlate with the daily log. This diary also noted the time of day and location of my search. I limited myself to my own neighborhood for the sake of consistent comparison (I wanted to be able to compare what days, times, and specific blocks lent the best findings) and convenience. I had to keep to my schedule of work and school, thus my own neighborhood was the only place I returned to on a daily basis. I further limited my mongo to items I had a specific use for. If I found items that would not go to use in my own home, I left them on the street.
Jeff Ferrell served as an inspiration for this project with his book, The Empire of Scrounge, an extensive experiment exploring the culture of scrounging other people’s trash for usable goods. His approach was to “wait and watch, to see what the empire [of scrounge] might offer me, to improvise my survival and my analysis from whatever emerged” (2006:204). I also wanted to let the mongo tell its own story.
I have learned that mongo is a dynamic cultural phenomenon in that its meaning, both literally and symbolically, varies and changes. Mongo does not have a static cultural significance. People not only have different perceptions about mongo, but also have perceptions that are prone to change in relation to their own experiences. I have seen these changes occur in the people I have shared my project with and in the way mongo has changed my own perceptions. I began this project apathetic in regards to mongo, and I am leaving it an impassioned supporter.
Before conducting this research I never thought about mongo. Garbage on the street was invisible. Yet after this week, the city is entirely different. I notice that my eyes unconsciously fall to the sidewalk, looking for signs of mongo. It is as if the city were a giant oyster opened up for my own use, free of charge. If I need something and have the patience, more than likely the bountiful garbage of New York will provide.
Mongo can cover a wide range of waste disposal actions, which differ in their cultural stigma. Mongo can mean everything from dumpster diving to recycling. It can represent a way of survival and subsistence or a dirty, socially taboo exercise. Carl Zimring explains that "waste is by definition negative and association with waste has social and cultural implications….handling waste requires breaking taboos about cleanliness and order” (2004:80). Yet on the other hand waste encompasses dual meanings. As the old saying goes, one man’s trash is another’s treasure. Martin O’Brien explains that waste has a “capacity to be its own opposite, to have no apparent value and yet potentially be valuable” (1999:268).
This project has not only taught me about the dynamism and duality of mongo, but also its importance to the system of waste disposal in New York City. Cooperation is a key element to the success of garbage disposal in the city. The citizens, superintendents, shopkeepers, and sanitation workers all work together in a finely tuned system to keep the city clean. Mongo is also part of this cooperation scheme.
Primarily, it serves as a system of shared understanding. The objects I found on the street did not seem to be left by careless citizens unconcerned with their hapless waste. These items seemed to be placed on the street meaningfully in the hopes that someone would rescue them. One piece of mongo was labeled, “Free! Take it!” Other times, and more often, mongo was clearly separated from other garbage, set in clean stacks or bagged together without signs of day-to-day refuse. In this way, mongo is a form of recycling. People place their old objects on the street hopeful that someone will recycle them in their own home. The mongoer is aware of this hope and thus does a service through their mongo. When I found an item to bring home, I was not only excited and grateful for the find, but I also felt if I had done a good deed. I had rid the city of one less waste and saved the landfill from one less piece of trash. I had found a home for a discarded and unloved object. It was a feeling not unlike adopting a pet.
Mongo also serves as a key part of our system of waste disposal because it works to “undermine the carefully constructed cultural status of consumption” (Ferrell 2006:203). It creates an important dialogue about what we waste, what we consume, and what we value. By breaking the social taboos of handling waste we allow a dialogue to take place. The most important aspect of this project has been being able to take part in that dialogue.
If our garbage remains invisible it allows for apathy. Mongo is key to the system of waste disposal because it forces us to look at our waste. It forces us to consider what we consume, what we throw away, and its repercussions. As an added bonus, and for all those unconvinced, mongo can also provide stylish home furnishings and sometimes even an expensive new purse from Barney’s!

*I use the term mongo in this paper in three forms. It is used as a verb, meaning “to mongo,” the act of searching for and acquiring usable goods left in the garbage. It is also used as a noun, meaning the item or items that are found. I have also used a variation of the noun form,mongoer, meaning one who mongos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ferrell, Jeff. 2006. Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging. New York University Press: New York and London.

O’Brien, M. 1999. Rubbish-Power: Towards Sociology of the Rubbish Society. In J. Hearn and S. Roseneil, eds., Consuming Cultures: Power and Resistance. New York: St. Martins.

Zimring, Carl. 2004. Dirty Work: How Hygiene and Xenophobia Marginalized the American Waste Trades. Enviornmental History 9(1):80-101.

Mongo Diary:
Download file

Mongo Pictures:

West Side Trash Story

The first thing that came to mind when asked to observe a trash-related element of city life was my job. I am a teacher. I would like to explore three elements of refuse and my daily life on the job. First, I would like to delve into the trash that our school produces. Secondly, I will share the observations made of the disposal habits of our students and lastly I want to attempt to tackle the question, “Where does the trash go?”

As Kelly and I went over historical material for our scanning project, I found a twentysomething-year-old document from the DSNY. It mentioned that the five dirtiest neighborhoods in New York City were East Harlem, Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Prospect Heights, and the Bronx’s Grand Concourse. Since it was written over twenty years ago, I was curious how these neighborhoods might look today. For a three-page assignment, I figured I should choose a smaller scope, though, so I picked Grand Concourse from the list and went to check it out.

I ride the NYC subway almost every day. On some days, I ride on up to three or four different train lines in the course of a single day. Perhaps the most agonizing part about all of this local travel is the waiting: five minutes for one train to come, ten minutes waiting in the station for a connecting train to arrive. Like myself, many New Yorkers have learned how to pass the time by reading books or newspapers, listening to iPods or playing a handheld video game. I can’t often commit to doing any of the above because of my ADD-like tendencies, for as soon as I delve into Salman Rushdie’s latest novel or the 50-page reserve reading for a class or choose Kayne West’s new track to bless my ears, my attention is often diverted to elsewhere in my surroundings. Namely, the platform or the subway tracks. Over the last six months, possibly even longer ago, I began noticing the piles and piles of garbage just “hanging out” on the subway tracks. And of course, my attention is often diverted to the scurrying rats that go to and fro across the tracks—but rats are boring. Everyone talks about them, gasps or squeals when they see one, laughs at said person’s reaction, stares as they go out their grubby, dirty business. But I have never overhead a conversation about the amount of garbage that just seems to pile up on the subway tracks. Or who deals with it, and why it just never seems to go away. Or most importantly, what is immediately affected by this seemingly endless build-up of garbage.

29., originally uploaded by ema299@nyu.edu.

Shoes on a power line at E. 199th St. and Valentine Ave. There were more of these; this was shot out my car window as I noticed them at a stoplight. Why do they throw them up there? (Who are “they?”) Who picks these up? (Does anyone?)

I am now obsessed with garbage. As I walk down the street, I scrutinize people’s bins with a quick glance, so that passers-by will not think that I am trying to steal their neighbors’ property, but I can still manage to get an idea of the contents of their waste. When I reach a corner, I peek at the baskets trying to find something that I have not clearly identified in my mind, but I that keep looking for intently. It is as if I suddenly discovered the potential usefulness of whatever others may dispose of: old lamps, shoes and clothes, magazine collections, books and wooden planks. These last weeks have revealed to me the patterns of plastic bottle recyclers in my neighborhood: men and women of diverse age-groups that wake up early and comb the streets, meticulously searching for plastic litter on the curb, inside garbage bags, and in recycling bins outside apartment buildings. They quickly collect soda bottles, milk containers, all the PET and HDPE plastic they can find. Older women carry their bottles in carts; younger men collect them in bags, but all of them sort the plastic according to classifications unknown to me.

What Does Your Trash Say About You?

It is said that one is able to gather a good deal of information about a person’s behavior and activities just by looking through their garbage. I know for a fact that if you were to dig through my trashcan in my apartment in Brooklyn Heights, you would probably find this view to be true and come to some interesting conclusions about who I am as a consumer. For example, the empty Starbucks cups (and let me emphasize here on cups in the plural) would reveal that I visit the chain on a regular basis, and some would argue almost to the point of obsession. Amongst the coffee cups, you would also find used napkins and brown paper bags from Chipotle Mexican Grill, again showing my loyalty to a specific chain. Other products found inside my trashcan include Orbit gum wrappers, an empty Baked Lays potato chip bag, Yoplait yogurt containers, and Heinz ketchup packets. If you were to search through my trash on a weekly basis, you would find all of these items repeatedly, because I stick to certain products and do not tend to make changes.

With this idea in mind, that if I personally held to specific brands and buying patterns, surely those in my neighborhood did too, and so for the next two weeks I set off to try and find out what those were. Of course I would not be able to fully grasp the consumer patterns of my fellow Brooklyn residents considering the time restraints, but I could at least try to begin to understand what their garbage revealed about them. According to the book Rubbish!, garbage in the United States is like a “mirror of American society,” and like my garbage, I definitely found that to be the case here with the population of Brooklyn Heights. I chose to concentrate on just a couple of residences because to go around the entire neighborhood and observe their trash would probably be an entire semester’s project within itself.

I started off by first observing my own apartment building’s habits and behaviors and found out some interesting things. Now, I have to add that my apartment building is all NYU graduate housing, so even before I looked at the garbage bins outside I assumed I would come across bottles of wine and beer, or fast food packaging, being as we are students; we hardly have time to cook our own dinner and having the occasional drink is not at all far from the truth. However, what I found in the plastic bags that lined the curb outside my building surprised me; instead of bottles of alcohol, there were bottles of water, and not just any particular brand either. There were bottles of seltzer water, Smart Water, tonic water and various mountain water brands. And instead of McDonald’s bags, I found discarded boxes of Lean Cuisine and other sorts of healthy prepackaged food. It seemed that graduate students were healthier than I had given them credit for!

The next apartment building I focused on (about a couple of blocks away from mine) produced almost the same results as my building, with the exception that more families seemed to live here. The reason I came to this latter conclusion was because there were a lot of Capri Sun juice boxes (very popular with the kids and easy to put in a lunch bag) as well as fruit snack boxes (such as Fruit Roll-ups) and dinosaur shaped chicken nugget boxes (such as Kid’s Cuisine). But like my building, water bottles overflowed their plastic bags (mostly of the Perrier brand), as well as other healthy beverages such as Tropicana orange juice (which was pretty much the only brand I came across) and milk cartons (of no particularly dominant brand, but usually skim or 2%). Another interesting observation I made was the brand of magazines, usually Shape, Self, or Men’s Fitness, again confirming my findings that my neighborhood was concerned with its health.

Of course just by observing these two residences for a couple of weeks, it is hard to decipher which individuals/families like which brands, or whether they chose to buy something merely because it was on sale. However, for the majority of the part of what I observed, the people in my surrounding neighborhood generally lead healthy lives. This is not to say that they never eat fast food, or they never drink soda or alcohol, but during the course of two weeks of observing their trash, I found that on the whole they like to take care of their bodies.

As I pondered about my behavior and the behavior of those around me, I started to consider Maya’s blog entry titled “Trash Talk.” It was about a website she had found that focused on a project people were experimenting with; for two weeks straight, you had to live with your trash and refrain from using a trashcan, this way people would become more aware of how much waste they actually produced. I thought to myself, if I were to test out this little project, what would it say about my waste habits and how would it affect my consumer patterns?

Now, I’m just taking a guess but I would probably come to find that I drink way too much coffee and spend way too much money at Starbucks. Instead of paying four dollars per drink, I could save more money by buying some generic coffee brand and making some at home, which would also reduce my consumption of paper cups by using a ceramic mug instead. Or I would come to find that I should also cut down on the Chipotle runs, because 1) it’s not entirely healthy to eat here all the time and 2) like Starbucks, it’s expensive and I could save the money and buy more groceries. What would my fellow Brooklyn residents find of themselves? Maybe they would find that they should drink more skim milk instead of 2%, or maybe they would cut down on the bottled water and reduce their consumption by buying a filtered water container like Brita or Pur. Living with your trash, like I told Maya, would be a good experiment to see your patterns of waste but it’s almost pointless because it will all end up in the trash anyways. And like I said before, I would probably cut down on the Starbucks and Chipotle, but you would still find these items in my trashcan, because I'm a girl who needs my caffeine somehow, as well as my occasional Mexican fix.

References
Jex, Maya Gibley. Trash Talk. MAKING A MUSEUM: Materializing Regimes of Value with the NYC Department of Sanitation Blog. Sept. 27, 2007.
Rathje, William and Cullen Murphy. 2001. Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. Tempe, AZ: U of Arizona P.

View of my trashcan with Chipotle remnants

Bottled water outside my apartment

View of the street where I observed the other apartment building

Tropicana orange juice, which was the dominant orange juice of choice in my neighborhood

SHAPE magazine outside other apartment building

For the past few weeks I contemplated, observed, studied and simply paid very close attention to the “Garbage Mark” apparent on many sidewalks in Manhattan. This Mark (I also toyed with the name “Trash Juice Spot”, “Ick Spot, “ and, as an homage to Rathje- “Slop Spot”) came to my attention one afternoon as I was walking back to my apartment. I realized that I constantly sidestepped the “Garbage Mark” left by the bags that are carried out both from my apartment and the restaurant next door. I was acting as if the garbage was still there, and I watched in interest as a line of others stepped around the spot as well. As I began to try and shape my analysis of this Mark, a few questions came to mind. Is there more than just one answer to why people avoid the Mark? Is the Garbage Mark a neighborhood-by-neighborhood phenomenon? Are there larger implications of these permanent stains? In the end I found the answer to be yes to all of the above.

In Mexico, waste pickers are usually a source of embarrassment, a cause of pity, or even repulsion. I had always believed that people who become waste scavengers decide to do so because they have no other choice. Now that I think about it, this assumption influenced my decision of leaving that soft and fresh loaf of bread I once found in a trash bag, outside my local grocery store in New York.

My local grocery store at 38th St. and 3rd Ave. This is the way it looks everyday around 9:00PM.

On a positive recycling note, Seattle appears to be kicking butt. While I love General Waring's idea for the Sanitation Department to pay for itself by re-selling mongo, that's clearly not in the 5-year plan. But if cities like Seoul and Seattle can compost waste, why not New York City?

See the article below about recycling on the West Coast.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/us/10recycle.html?ei=5070&en=c28defbfe57c8668&ex=1192680000&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1192133002-OFXc2+p5iPT1/4wS9hLOig

E. 204th St. and E. Mosholu Parkway South: trash on and around a park bench, inc. discarded clothing items.

some of you might be interested in this article for some comparative ethnography of waste: the Journal of Material culture can be accessed for free via Bobst e-journal holdings....

Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 12, No. 3, 309-331 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1359183507081897
© 2007 SAGE Publications
The Materiality of Domestic Waste

The Recycled Cosmology of the Dogon of Mali

Laurence Douny
University College London, UK, l.douny@ucl.ac.uk

This article explores some of the multiple forms and uses of Dogon domestic waste, considering daily shared experiences of the matter. It examines the implicit meanings objectified in the materiality of, and the daily praxis associated with, rubbish that the Dogon select and allocate to particular places in and out of their `home container'. These are framed within a recycled cosmology that encompasses a plurality of entangled world-views that inform us about the life cycles of people, environment and society.

Update: November 5, 2007 -- a few new additions. I've also circulated this to some folks within the DSNY; they're adding to it, so expect it to grow. -- RN

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Some of you have started your interviews, or will start them shortly. Here is the long-promised glossary of terms relevant to working in the DSNY. Most of these are from the garages -- that is, they are the kind of language that you'll hear peppering the speech of guys in conversation during the work day when that work day is wrapped around actually being on the streets collecting trash. DSNY personnel who work in offices, or civilian DSNY folk generally, use this lingo less (or not at all).

Trash, so often taken for granted, is an incredibly powerful, vast collection of the remnants of everyday human life. But because such a large percentage of it will never simply disappear, both individuals and municipal entities must collectively develop resourceful new ways of transforming into something else. The very definition of garbage-that it is unwanted, often toxic and no longer useful-makes it difficult to conceptualize that it can and often does have a second life cycle. Recycling is one of the more obvious ways that we deal with trash, but there is much more to recycling than simply sorting paper, plastics and metals. The slogan “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” means many things to many people, and necessitates creative practical application on in order to positively impact the way the public thinks about trash and the way it is managed.

As Katie requested, this post summarises what is expected of you by the end of the semester. We would like a project report which contextualises your final text for the exhibition (to be included in the paper) in the light of your scanning, archival, oral history and other research. This should be 10-15 pages (co-authored together). We are looking both for an overview of your work this semester but, more importantly, for an analysis of the key intellectual issues you became interested in and a critical dissection of how working with the different media (interviews, archives, libraries, ethnographic research) helped you to develop your ideas. We would also like you to note here any commentaries you had about the functionality of the archive, the utility of the blog (including any criticisms) and the general contribution of digital media to the project. We also want to hear any ideas you might have about the future of the museum.

In short, this assignment should draw together all of your different work over the semester and link the museum based work to the intellectual investigations you have been undertaking into the DSNY.

A tenatative breakdown or structure for the paper which you might like to follow, but which YOU CAN ALSO CHANGE OR AMEND could be:

1. Introduction - to your topic and theme,

2. Overview of what you did during the semester

3. Critical analyses of what you learned from working with these different media (what you learned from the images, from the oral histories, from other research.

4. Discussion of the usefulness and limitations of different media and the digital domain

5. A copy of your final text for the exhibition, contextualised in terms of why you focused on these specific images and ideas (this can be based on your previous assignment of course - those of you who worked seperately please liaise)

6. A summary of your ideas for the future of the DSNY Museum (and some provisional ideas/summary of what you might like to put in a Kimmel window for next semester)

All of these sections should be included but please feel free to add more or less.

The due date for this assignment is: Monday December 16th.

(which will give you time to reflect on the opening of the exhibition