Storage closets. There’s a closet behind the lecture hall in FPH filled with books, old newspapers, tapes, and electronics. A layer of dust covers everything. Closets are made to hide what is inside them. Of course closets usually hold things that aren’t considered waste but they still work to supporate. All this stuff, because it’s been put in an accessible place, because no one knows about it, because it’s behind unmarked doors, has sorta become waste. No one uses it, it rots in cardboard boxes, it gathers dust. And it is only allowed to exist in this state because it is kept out of sight. Distance, even on this small scale of a closet and its forgotten contents, is a work of distance.

Distance is a tool used by the oppressor. That’s why they work so hard to maintain it. The people with power have separated themselves from the rest of the world. The pain created by the same systems they benefit from has been made invisible to them. Distance makes the whole system possible. We get closer and closer to waste the more we are considered waste ourselves within the hierarchy.