sanitation department 2001

Pine timber, white gloss paint, industrial grease, steel spiles, steel collection buckets

115 x 120 x 240 cm

Produced with support from the Koppel Project

Sanitation Department 2001 posits the outhouse as an indispensable, although mostly obsolete, part of the history of american sanitation. Literally and figuratively, sanitation concerns the removal of that which is indecent to preserve an ideal of decency. The architecture of the outhouse, a simple wood-frame structure, calls back to the 17th century buildings erected quickly to claim ownership over land. The outhouse both exemplifies the sanitation of america’s history, and the current systems of false narrative building developed in the aftermath of 9/11.