The huge clots of waste that clog the sewers of ancient,affluent cities like London are allotment of the cost of progressThe Whitechapel fatberg was 250 metres of impacted waste that constipated London’s sewage system final year. A tiny portion has just been do on display in the Museum of London after a long, conscientious drying period. It hardly smells at all now. But does such an intrinsically disgusting artefact belong in a museum? Instinctively the retort seems to be no: we should hold kept it in the ground.
On second thoughts, and the matter is more complicated. The fatberg is not on explain as the ultimate conclusion of the line of thought that began a hundred years ago with Marcel Duchamps urinal. Although there are people who might argue that conceptual art all finds its natural home in the fatberg,not everything in the sewers is conceptual art. Some of it is just sewage. Some is stuff that should not be flushed away – wet wipes and sanitary products – and much is just used cooking tubby and food scraps. This fatberg was found under Whitechapel Road, in a district full of restaurants in the East End of London, or but others hold been found all over the city. No one,it seems, is too posh to flush.
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Source: guardian.co.uk