Ieva Butkutė
„Complex (re)design of the Environment: Landscapes of Waste“
The highest point in Lithuania rises 293 meters above sea level. Aside from the coastal dunes and hillforts, the landscape is relatively flat. I am driving through the plains of central Lithuania when suddenly a massive landfill emerges before my eyes. In my imagination, I return to childhood and remember how the landfill I saw every day overwhelmed me with its sculptural form, mystery, and sheer scale. I could not understand why this enormous structure, as if piled from ice and snow, never melted even during the hottest summer days. The impression it left on me as a small child remained extraordinarily vivid. It took many years before I learned that this landfill is fertilizer-production waste — a human-made metamorphosis of phosphate resources.
The Earth is a planetary mine — a vast industrial organism in which national borders dissolve. Sociologist Martin Arboleda describes the Earth as a unified circulatory system where processes, materials, and infrastructures that at first appear incompatible become interconnected. Resource extraction, logistics and economic relations operate as a complex network. While resources, goods, and services circulate through this system, waste often remains where it is produced. Since the late Soviet period and the early years of capitalism, landfill sites in Lithuania have continued to expand, their height seemingly destined to reach the sky, surpassing hills and ancient hillforts alike.
In this artistic research, I use a planetary optic — looking at the Earth from a bird’s-eye perspective — examining orthophotographs and spatial data maps. This is the easiest way to observe industrial areas, from mines to landfills, from private plots to state-owned territories. After surveying the planet from above, I shift my gaze once more: I zoom in on the screen of a smartphone and travel to the peripheries of forbidden industrial landscapes. I walk, listen, smell, touch, document, and collect these places created by human activity yet left unvisited. What if a prohibited waste landscape were transformed into a nature reserve? After all, the reconfiguration of the environment is ultimately a matter of collective agreement and legal regulation.
