April: "Bin it – Trash, Müll and Recycling in my City"
"Bin it – Trash, Müll and Recycling in my City"Some of our cities are drowning in trash, others fine their dwellers for not recycling properly. How do we as consumers and citizens react to the trash crisis so obvious in our cities? Which social implications are connected to the issue?
An Australian in Berlin, Ben Fajzullin, has a number of funny stories to tell about the Germans' obsession with recycling. According to his experiences, it is not uncommon for Germans to tell foreigners off for not recycling properly: "A neighbour recently knocked on the door telling me to break up boxes before throwing them into the designated bin. She'd found a letter addressed to me in one of them..." To illustrate the intricacy of the system, he posts a comprehensive table showing how to accurately dispose of the various types of rubbish in the land of "hardcore recyclers". 
Not unlike the Germans, New Zealanders are raised to "leave only their footprints", Ri Williamson reports from Auckland. In Ri's apartment building, there are recycling facilities available on each floor. However, as she points out, there are some things New Zealand can learn from seemingly unlikely countries such as India. On a trip to Asia, she saw people throwing their plates and cups on the street after eating. Alarmed at first, she then realised the dishes "were made out of dried, pressed leaves or unfired clay and were being returned back to the land". Following up on this, she suggests that in her own country, "organic kitchen waste could be collected in city buildings to be retained and used as compost", and that "rainwater could be recycled for irrigation in garden spaces between buildings". 
As the entries of Ben and Ri imply, recycling is seen as a practice employed mainly for environmental reasons in countries such as New Zealand and Germany. In contrast, Saigon's Christian Berg shows another dimension of the same activity. "In a country like Vietnam", he informs us, "everything has a value". As people are struggling to make a living, old cans present an opportunity to earn at least a little bit of money. In order to fully understand how hard their work really is, Christian spent some time with the people he shows in his photographs, and tried handling their tools. Perhaps it is this first-hand experience that explains the authentic vibe in his set of gloomy, black-and-white photographs. 
Michaela Danelova points us to a number of different spots where she encounters waste in the city of Prague. A single dead pigeon lying abandoned on an empty street seamlessly blends into the cobblestones' various shades of grey. The face of a fashion model peaks through a semi-transparent garbage bag, as a glossy magazine photograph is disposed of amid other domestic rubbish. In a similar contrast, an expensive-looking car is parked right next to a huge pile of garbage bags. While these two objects may be vastly different when it comes to their material value, they do share the shiny, cool blackness of their surface. 
Lee Kwan Goh in Kuala Lumpur is one of the CityScapes artists following a rather minimalist approach. For example, he interpreted the previous month's sexuality theme exclusively through a slow pan shot over lush green rainforest leaves. This month, he starts his video with a stretch of ten seconds of a pitch-black still image, followed by arrangements of shots showing unnamed industrial facilities. Lee does not provide additional explanations to his videos, so he leaves us guessing that we are looking at a Malaysian waste disposal centre. After two minutes, the machinery patterns stop as abruptly as they have begun, and the video returns to its black origin. 
In contrast to Lee's focus on technology, Jakarta's Farid Rakun turns the topic onto its head as he calls for "upcycling" rather than recycling. Adding a positive air to the somewhat problematic topic, he comes up with a creative solution that is a pleasure to watch: Farid gathers a number of friends around him, and films his "agents" as they alter their old clothes for re-use. Baggy pants are turned into a skirt, a singlet becomes a bag, and a standard men's shirt is transformed into a scarf. In yet another interesting twist – this time on copyright issues in connection with web content – Farid chooses Adam McKay's "Public Domain Protest Song" as the soundtrack for his video. STATEMENT
Please note that these six examples may serve to give you a rough idea of what is to be found in the CityScapes Blog, but bear in mind that all other entries are just as great, so definitely go and explore the blog as a whole!
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