SEDIMENT is a 3-channel video collage and textile sculpture installation imaging the geologic interior of the excessive clothing waste of US consumerism. The mass production of textile products in the last 40 years has begun physically shaping our Earth. Our pollution is now a material medium with the power to forge new landscape features. Mountains of discarded clothing, sometimes still unworn, are accumulating in the South. The installation focuses, specifically, on the rapidly expanding waste formations in Accra, Ghana, and Chile’s Atacama Desert. These sites are fed steadily by streams of cargo ships from wealthy, Western countries like the United States, carrying clothing remains barely touched by any recycling or reselling efforts. The artwork imagines these clothing mountains as true geologic features, shaped not by natural Earth processes over hundreds of millions of years, but by the human whims of yearly, monthly, and even weekly cycles of clothing trends. Synthetic fabrics in mass-produced textiles ensure the material lives on exponentially longer than the short time it takes to reach its earthen grave. Chemical and physical forces no longer determine the shape of the Earth as quickly as our desires and our dollars.

The textile sculptures engulf and transform the room into a tangled and weaving cave, as if one could explore the inside of a clothing mountain. Clothes hang from the ceiling and rise from the floor like stalactites, forcing the viewer to duck, bend, and squeeze their way through the space. Items of clothing salvaged from the local community confront and potentially reflect the viewer at every turn: sweaters, robes, shoes, prom dresses, coats, belts, bags, t-shirts, and an array of other neglected items, some still dangling unbroken tags. The project facilitated sourcing and transportation of all clothing donations, so items were neither actively worn nor actively given away, but left around, unused or forgotten about: a pure example of frivolous excess.  The size of the individual body is dwarfed by the volume of textiles that have already been digested by the collective, displaying the physically absurd rates of production, consumption, and turnover.

Seismic wave recordings of earthquakes, transposed into the frequency of human hearing, eerily echo and shatter through the space. These audio recordings envelope the viewer in Earth’s interior and layer records of crust movement into the fantastical installation. Imagery of volcanic activity and mineral precipitation merge with documentary footage of the waste sites in Ghana and Chile, blending geologic and pollutant mountain formation. Archival video shows fragments of the waste transportation infrastructure cut with advertisement media. Commercial imagery is woven into the video collage, referencing the constant corporate and marketing hypnosis that influences consumer behavior and accumulates into the systemic, environmental injustices of the fashion industry. Whether it be an ad for jeans from the 1980s or your local sorority girl’s single-use, fast-fashion in a trash bag headed for Goodwill, each propels the landslide of waste shipments burying Southern ports every day.