Lev Bratishenko interviews Curt Gambetta for the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s Abroad series.

Bratishenko: While it is the “ruptures or discrepancies” of waste infrastructure that are seen as signs of failure, which in the context of our exhibition Imperfect Health also means dangerous, are there public health implications for the uninterrupted flow of waste as well? Can hiding waste be ‘bad’ for us?

Gambetta: When I think of the consequences of hiding waste, I think first of its political and the social implications. Questions of health are struggled over and inseparable from social experience. I am most interested in how questions of health are contested in the messiness of everyday life, whatever their supposed enclosure in the domain of science and technocracy. The implications for public health are in many senses an outcome of the way in which we organize our relationship to waste—socially and spatially. It is inscribed at the heart of notions of public and private responsibility as well as architectural and urban order.

*Updated 2017, as “Waste Creeps Back”

Interview continues here: http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/issues/23/take-care/1377/waste-creeps-back