Salvage Acts: Asian/American Artists and the Uncovering of Slow Violence in the San Francisco Bay Area
Keywords:
Visual studies, critical geography, American studies, urban studies, Asian American art, Black geography, waste, recycling, Callifornia, slow violenceAbstract
This essay excavates geographies of environmental injustice and racial violence in San Francisco, California using the artwork of Asian/American artists Weston Teruya, Michael Arcega, and Stephanie Syjuco made during their residencies at Recology (the city’s privately-owned waste management facility). At Recology’s Artist-In-Residence program, cultural workers salvage materials from the dump, transforming the city’s waste into objects with educational and artistic value. Reading the visual lexicon deployed in, and the conditions of production and circulation of, these assemblages, I trace the wastelanding of communities of color across the Northern California region through processes of incarceration, toxic exposure, displacement, and labor exploitation. These artworks, I argue, assist in uncovering the terrain of slow violence in the region and across scales, or what Rob Nixon has called “landscapes of temporal overspill that elude rhetorical cleanup operations with their sanitary beginnings and endings” (2011, 8).
References
Arcega, Michael. Pri-Sohn Stick Chart (Map of Isolation Chambers). 2015, bamboo, metal,
quartz crystals, 60” x 48” x 3.” Oakland: Johansson Projects.
Arcega, Michael. Recologica: A Nacireman Excavation. 2015. San Francisco: Recology
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Dillon, Lindsey. 2014. Race, Waste, and Space: Brownfield Redevelopment and Environmental
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Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in
Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gordon, Avery. 2008. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. New
Edition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Heiner, Brady. 2015. Excavating the Sedimentations of Slavery: The Unfinished Project of
American Abolition. In, Geoffrey Adelsberg, Lisa Guenther, and Scott Zeman (eds.), Death and Other Penalties: Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 13-42.
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Munich: Prestel Publishing, pp. 15-27.
Jones, Kellie. 2017. South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and
1970s. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kelly, Tony and Marie Harrison. Trying to build a future on toxic ground. San Francisco
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Lipsitz, George. 2007. The Racialization of Space and the Spatialization of Race: Theorizing the
Hidden Architecture of Landscape. Landscape Journal, 26:1, 10-23.
Maeda, Daryl. 2005. Black Panthers, Red Guards, and Chinamen: Constructing Asian American
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Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA:
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Palumbo-Liu, David. 1999. Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier.
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Perry, Stewart. 1978. San Francisco Scavengers: Dirty Work and the Pride of Ownership.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pulido, Laura.1996. A Critical Review of the Methodology of Environmental Racism Research.
Antipode, 28:2, 142-159.
Quiray Tagle, Thea. 2017. Feeling the Manilatown and Fillmore Blues: Al Robles’s Politics and
Poetics of Place. Critical Ethnic Studies, 3:2, 99-125.
Recology. 2013. Recology San Francisco, Art at the Dump Artist in Residence Exhibitions:
Work by Yulia Pinkusevich, Stephanie Syjuco and Brittany Watkins.
https://www.recology.com/recology_news/recology-san-francisco-art-at-the-dump-artist-in-residence-exhibitions-work-by-yulia-pinkusevich-stephanie-syjuco-and-brittany-watkins/
Relyea, Lane. 2013. Your Everyday Art World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rios, Victor M. 2006. The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of
Mass Incarceration. Souls, 8:2, 40-54.
Rogoff, Irit. 2000. Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture. New York: Routledge.
SCOPE Los Angeles. 2017. Climate Equity from the Grassroots: Aligning State and Local
Priorities with a Community Vision. http://scopela.org/our-work/research/ (accessed
November 4, 2018).
See, Sarita Echavez. 2017. The Filipino Primitive: Accumulation and Resistance in the American
Museum. New York: New York University Press.
Shah, Nayan. 2001. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Syjuco, Stephanie. Modern Ruins (Popular Cannibals). 2014, double-sided installation using all
scavenged materials. San Francisco: Recology Artist-in-Residence Studio.
Sze, Julie. 2007. Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental
Justice. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Tam, Laura. Toward Zero Waste: A Look at San Francisco’s Model Recycling Policies. SPUR
Urbanist Issue 489 (February 1, 2010). http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2010-02-01/toward-zero-waste (accessed January 15, 2017).
Teruya, Weston. Extracting Gold in the New City. 2016, paper sculpture from recycled office
supplies, building paper, wrapping paper, and start-up brochures, 92" x 71" x 47." San
Francisco: Recology Artist-in-Residence Studio.
Teruya, Weston. Lessons Learned. 2016, paper sculpture from recycled office supplies, building
paper, construction signage, playing cards, tissue paper, children’s play blocks, and
holographic paper. San Francisco: Recology Artist-in-Residence Studio.
Thompson, Heather Ann. 2012. The Prison Industrial Complex: A Growth Industry in a
Shrinking Economy. New Labor Forum, 21:3, (Fall), 38-47.
U.S. Census Bureau. 2012. QuickFacts: San Francisco city, California; San Francisco County,
California. census.gov. Web.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,sanfranciscocountycalifornia/HCN010212#HCN010212
U.S. Census Bureau. 2017. American Community Survey 1-year estimates. Retrieved
from Census Reporter Profile page for San Francisco County (South Central)—Bayview
& Hunters Point PUMA, CA. https://censusreporter.org/profiles/79500US0607507-san-francisco-county-south-centralbayview--hunters-point-puma-ca/
United Nations, General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a
component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-
discrimination in this context, A/73/310/Rev. 1 (19 September 2018), available from http://www.undocs.org/A/73/310/rev.1
Voyles, Traci Brynne. 2015. Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wynter, Sylvia. 2003. Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the
Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument. CR: The New Centennial
Review, 3:3 (Fall), 257-337.
Wynter, Sylvia and Katherine McKittrick. 2015. Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or,
to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations. In, Katherine McKittrick (ed.),
Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 9-89.
quartz crystals, 60” x 48” x 3.” Oakland: Johansson Projects.
Arcega, Michael. Recologica: A Nacireman Excavation. 2015. San Francisco: Recology
Artist-in-Residence Studio.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Draft Environmental Impact
Report: Level II Infill Correctional Facilities Project, Volume 4. Site-Specific Evaluation
of Level II Infill Correctional Facilities at Folsom State Prison / California State Prison,
Sacramento. Ascent Environmental, Inc. State Clearinghouse No: 2012122038.
Sacramento: June 2013.
California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) Board. Report to the Legislature Fiscal Year
2016-17. February 1, 2018. https://www.calpia.ca.gov/news/reports-and-publications/report-to-the-legislature-fiscal-year-2016-17/ (accessed February 10, 2018).
Davis, Angela Y. and Cassandra Shaylor. 2001. Race, Gender, and the Prison Industrial
Complex: California and Beyond. Meridians, 2:1, 1-25.
Dillon, Lindsey. 2014. Race, Waste, and Space: Brownfield Redevelopment and Environmental
Justice at the Hunters Point Shipyard. Antipode, 46:5, 1205-1221.
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in
Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gordon, Avery. 2008. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. New
Edition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Heiner, Brady. 2015. Excavating the Sedimentations of Slavery: The Unfinished Project of
American Abolition. In, Geoffrey Adelsberg, Lisa Guenther, and Scott Zeman (eds.), Death and Other Penalties: Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 13-42.
Humes, Edward. 2013. Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash. New York: Penguin
Books.
Johnson, Lizzie and Kevin Fagen. San Francisco has world-class trash talk. San Francisco
Chronicle, 7 January 2017, https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-has-world-class-trash-talk-10841633.php (accessed January 12, 2018).
Jones, Kellie (ed). 2011. Introduction to Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980.
Munich: Prestel Publishing, pp. 15-27.
Jones, Kellie. 2017. South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and
1970s. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kelly, Tony and Marie Harrison. Trying to build a future on toxic ground. San Francisco
Chronicle, 13 February 2018,
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Trying-to-build-a-future-on-toxic-ground-12608336.php#photo-14965724 (accessed February 13, 2018).
Lipsitz, George. 2007. The Racialization of Space and the Spatialization of Race: Theorizing the
Hidden Architecture of Landscape. Landscape Journal, 26:1, 10-23.
Maeda, Daryl. 2005. Black Panthers, Red Guards, and Chinamen: Constructing Asian American
Identity through Performing Blackness, 1969-1972. American Quarterly, 57:4 (December), 1079-1103.
Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Palumbo-Liu, David. 1999. Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Pellow, David Naguib. 2018. What is Critical Environmental Justice? Medford, MA: Polity
Press.
Perry, Stewart. 1978. San Francisco Scavengers: Dirty Work and the Pride of Ownership.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pulido, Laura.1996. A Critical Review of the Methodology of Environmental Racism Research.
Antipode, 28:2, 142-159.
Quiray Tagle, Thea. 2017. Feeling the Manilatown and Fillmore Blues: Al Robles’s Politics and
Poetics of Place. Critical Ethnic Studies, 3:2, 99-125.
Recology. 2013. Recology San Francisco, Art at the Dump Artist in Residence Exhibitions:
Work by Yulia Pinkusevich, Stephanie Syjuco and Brittany Watkins.
https://www.recology.com/recology_news/recology-san-francisco-art-at-the-dump-artist-in-residence-exhibitions-work-by-yulia-pinkusevich-stephanie-syjuco-and-brittany-watkins/
Relyea, Lane. 2013. Your Everyday Art World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rios, Victor M. 2006. The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of
Mass Incarceration. Souls, 8:2, 40-54.
Rogoff, Irit. 2000. Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture. New York: Routledge.
SCOPE Los Angeles. 2017. Climate Equity from the Grassroots: Aligning State and Local
Priorities with a Community Vision. http://scopela.org/our-work/research/ (accessed
November 4, 2018).
See, Sarita Echavez. 2017. The Filipino Primitive: Accumulation and Resistance in the American
Museum. New York: New York University Press.
Shah, Nayan. 2001. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Syjuco, Stephanie. Modern Ruins (Popular Cannibals). 2014, double-sided installation using all
scavenged materials. San Francisco: Recology Artist-in-Residence Studio.
Sze, Julie. 2007. Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental
Justice. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Tam, Laura. Toward Zero Waste: A Look at San Francisco’s Model Recycling Policies. SPUR
Urbanist Issue 489 (February 1, 2010). http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2010-02-01/toward-zero-waste (accessed January 15, 2017).
Teruya, Weston. Extracting Gold in the New City. 2016, paper sculpture from recycled office
supplies, building paper, wrapping paper, and start-up brochures, 92" x 71" x 47." San
Francisco: Recology Artist-in-Residence Studio.
Teruya, Weston. Lessons Learned. 2016, paper sculpture from recycled office supplies, building
paper, construction signage, playing cards, tissue paper, children’s play blocks, and
holographic paper. San Francisco: Recology Artist-in-Residence Studio.
Thompson, Heather Ann. 2012. The Prison Industrial Complex: A Growth Industry in a
Shrinking Economy. New Labor Forum, 21:3, (Fall), 38-47.
U.S. Census Bureau. 2012. QuickFacts: San Francisco city, California; San Francisco County,
California. census.gov. Web.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,sanfranciscocountycalifornia/HCN010212#HCN010212
U.S. Census Bureau. 2017. American Community Survey 1-year estimates. Retrieved
from Census Reporter Profile page for San Francisco County (South Central)—Bayview
& Hunters Point PUMA, CA. https://censusreporter.org/profiles/79500US0607507-san-francisco-county-south-centralbayview--hunters-point-puma-ca/
United Nations, General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a
component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-
discrimination in this context, A/73/310/Rev. 1 (19 September 2018), available from http://www.undocs.org/A/73/310/rev.1
Voyles, Traci Brynne. 2015. Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wynter, Sylvia. 2003. Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the
Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument. CR: The New Centennial
Review, 3:3 (Fall), 257-337.
Wynter, Sylvia and Katherine McKittrick. 2015. Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or,
to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations. In, Katherine McKittrick (ed.),
Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 9-89.
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Published
2019-10-03
How to Cite
Tagle, T. Q. (2019). Salvage Acts: Asian/American Artists and the Uncovering of Slow Violence in the San Francisco Bay Area. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(5), 1112–1127. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1702
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Special Issue - Slow Violence (Guest Eds. Caitlin Cahill & Rachel Pain)
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