Pew Center for Arts and Heritage

Get our monthly newsletter in your inbox for the latest on cultural events, ideas, conversations, and grantmaking news in Philadelphia and beyond.

Digging Deeper: Field Studies Made Possible by the Waste Stream

RAIR
RAIR, Filthy Rich, 2016, installation view, The Galleries at Moore. Photo by Joseph Hu.
RAIR, Filthy Rich, 2016, installation view, The Galleries at Moore. Photo by Joseph Hu.
Situated inside a construction and demolition waste recycling company in northeast Philadelphia, RAIR offers artists studio space and access to more than 350 tons of materials per day. Photo by Caleb Eckert.
Situated inside a construction and demolition waste recycling company in northeast Philadelphia, RAIR offers artists studio space and access to more than 350 tons of materials per day. Photo by Caleb Eckert.
Philadelphia Contemporary and Headlong hosted a silent walking tour and interactive performance dialogue at RAIR. Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Contemporary.
Philadelphia Contemporary and Headlong hosted a silent walking tour and interactive performance dialogue at RAIR. Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Contemporary.

Recycled Artist in Residency (RAIR) will engage with a team of social scientists in a discovery process to explore a recycling facility as a site for field research on contemporary urban life. Digging Deeper will invite participants to ask what can be learned from considering “waste as artifact” and employing ethnographic, anthropological, and forensic methodologies. The research team will consist of scholars whose areas of focus range from immigration and income inequality to environmental and material culture. They include: Anthony Graesch, associate professor of anthropology, Connecticut College; Jason De León, director of the Undocumented Migration Project; Robin Nagle, anthropologist in residence, New York City Department of Sanitation; and Amy Zhang, PhD candidate, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Jennifer Burris, a curator and writer based in Bogotá, Colombia, will serve as curatorial researcher, identifying opportunities for future cross-disciplinary programming between scholars and artists. The results of the team’s explorations will be shared in a forum, during which the scientists will join local grassroots and industry leaders in a charrette to envision the development of a “Waste Field Studies” project and future programmatic initiatives.

Additional unrestricted funds are added to each grant for general operating support.
 

Recipient
RAIR

RAIR

RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residency) builds awareness about sustainability issues through art and design by presenting programs and exhibitions, acting as a materials supplier for artists and designers, and offering a residency program that provides artists on-site access to recovered materials and a studio space to produce work. RAIR: Live at the Dump, funded by the Center in 2015, invited audiences to a series of films, performances, and discussions intended to increase public awareness of the waste stream as well as the role of art in shaping social and environmental consciousness. In 2017, RAIR received a Center Discovery grant to engage with a team of social scientists to explore the recycling facility as a site for field research on contemporary urban life. In 2019, RAIR received Center support to work with artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles and a group of interdisciplinary artists on a project exploring the environmental history and artistic potential of a former scrap metal facility through a series of widely distributed creative newsprint publications.

More info
News

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Announces 2017 Grants for Philadelphia Artists, Organizations

Jun 19, 2017
Explore Connections

Poet Ross Gay on Sport and the Act of Looking
Video Cross-Disciplinary Practices
Denice Frohman, 2022 Pew Fellow.
Denice Frohman
Pew Fellow Literature
Cesar Viveros and Ada Trillo

Fellow to Fellow: Artists Cesar Viveros and Ada Trillo on Art Created from Memory and Cultural Identity
Interview Social & Community-Based Practices
TOWN, 2022, Theatre Horizon, Norristown, PA. Photo by John C. Hawthorne.
Building a Sense of Belonging through Community-Centered Theater
Essay Social & Community-Based Practices
Paint Factory performed by Darin Atwater and his Soulful Symphony, 2019, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Baltimore, MD. Photo by Stephen Cherry.
Black Metropolis: Improvisations on Paint Factory
Project Grant Performance
Sabaah Folayan, 2022 Pew Fellow.
Sabaah Folayan
Pew Fellow Film & Media
The Crossing Choir in Montana. Photo by Kevin Vondrak. 
Farming
Project Grant Performance
William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision
Project Grant Exhibitions & Public Interpretation
Pig Iron Theatre Company, The Path of Pins or the Path of Needles, directed by Josephine Decker, 2022, Rigby Mansion, Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Johanna Austin. 
Director Josephine Decker on Translating the Experience of Pregnancy into Performance
Video Practice & Process