Kegan Jenkins Contemplation & Action Alexander Weinstein 12 November 2015

WASTE LAND Reaction

Waste Land is a documentary film directed by Lucy Walker that follows artist Vik

Muniz. In the documentary Vik Muniz travels to the world’s largest landfill in Rio de Janerio.

At this landfill there are people called pickers who make a living picking through the garbage.

Muniz decides uses these people to help him use the trash to create modern art. They then

auction the art of off and the money was used to help improve the life of the community. The

prize money the film won also went back to help the community. The documentary obvious says

a lot about how much we waste and how little we think about it. It is easy not to think about all

the garbage we make when we don’t have to spend our lives digging through that garbage.

However, it was interesting to see that some of those workers were very proud of what they did.

It seems to these people, it’s not garbage. Muniz decides to take a similar view: this isn’t

garbage, it’s art. I think it is a really beautiful thing to do and it’s something we see in art a lot

these days. Taking something ordinary or even gross and making into art. The scale of his

works are especially amazing, they are incredibly huge even though he just uses them to take a

picture of. It truly goes to show that you don’t have to have anything to make art, just the desire

to do it. Towards the end Muniz says “before I wanted everything and had nothing. Now I have

everything and want nothing.” I think it’s so amazing all the change and beauty he has made

simply by working with garbage.