Mottainai!

With three days left of our residency, our two main tasks are to process the waste we have gleaned in the best way we can, and to finish making the short creative documentary of our time here.

Here is a sneak peak from the film so far:

This afternoon, journalist Greg Ray and photographer Jonathan Carroll, from the Newcastle Herald came to the Lock-Up to interview us and photograph our expanding waste line. In the beginning of our stay, two and a half weeks in Newcastle seemed like a long time. Seeing all the rubbish we have collected through Jonathan's and Ray's eyes, we were able to see how much we had collected in a slightly objective way and we were filled with an aching regret that our culture's consumption leaves us with so much waste that can't be reused.

The Japanese call this mottainai, a term that Wikipedia defines as:

"...a sense of regret concerning waste when the intrinsic value of an object or resource is not properly utilised." The expression Mottainai! can be uttered alone as an exclamation when something useful, such as food or time, is wasted.