Stoop Down, Glean Inspirations in Junk

Weekly Thoughts on INTERDISCIPLINARY COALESCENCE

In Anés Varda’s The gleaners and I, the director is also a gleaner. She used her little camera to glean the images of people getting food from garbage. She was in a gesture of “stooping down”, not high above, like how these gleaning people at the bottom of the society treated the discarded things equally. It really inspires me in how to get the inspiration for artworks and the attitude towards creative practice. Like balanced diet is absolutely an healthy lifestyle, but having an expensive salad is not the only way to achieve this, the vegetables left on the ground can also give you vitamins. For creative practice, maybe we can take a look at the “Junk” being discarded, stoop down to glean some inspirations and stories, we will find a heart-shaped potato and bring it to new life.

I am also thinking about the responsibility. In the film the people without salary, home and food were actually the main group doing the environmental and recycle things for the city, neither the government nor the environmentalists. It is an unfair fact that the gleaning people have no chance to speak in front of the public. Anés Varda’s focus on these people in the society is sharp and profound, I think it could be the artist’s responsibility to turn the lens towards the unseen, speak for the silent ones.

The photo attached is a single shoe I gleaned using my camera in Central HK one night, an interesting gleaning in the center of the city.