“The world sends us garbage. We send back music.”
If you haven’t already, watch this video. Then head over to Kickstarter to ensure this trashtastic documentary is widely released.
Archive for the ‘Artistic Trash’ Category
Landfill Harmonic
Sunday, April 14, 2013Fuck Yeah Upcycle
Friday, February 15, 2013This. Happy Friday.
Trash Cam Carries On
Thursday, February 14, 2013Trash Cams—pinhole cameras constructed by German binmen out of dumpsters—were easily my favorite finding of Decorative Dumpster Day last year.
Photo by by Mirko Derpmann via Flickr
So I was delighted to be reminded of the project by a recent unconsumption post. The project’s Flickr page hosts a number of wonderful images including an adorable folder called The Tonnographers comprised of photos of the men taking photos with dumpsters; as well as the eery, arty pinhole images they captured.
Photo by by Michael Pfohlmann, Christoph Blaschke and Mirko Derpmann via Flickr
I just love the photo captions noting the type of camera as a “1.100 litre garbage container.”
Trash Dance
Tuesday, January 8, 2013Discard Studies, one of my favorite garbage resources, shared this link today to a screening next week of the documentary Trash Dance. I just RSVPed. Here’s the trailer, via the film’s official website.
A choreographer finds beauty and grace in garbage trucks, and against the odds, rallies reluctant city trash collectors to perform an extraordinary dance spectacle. On an abandoned airport runway, two dozen sanitation workers—and their trucks—inspire an audience of thousands.
Gabriel Orozco: Asterisms
Monday, January 7, 2013Artist Gabriel Orozco has what looks like an incredible sculpture and photo installation on view now at the Guggenheim in New York. Sandstars comprises natural detritus found in a wildlife reserve in Mexico while Astroturf Constellation comprises trash found near a playing field in New York City. Here’s a whimsical video on the show.
Thanks for the tip, Sarah.
We send back music
Monday, December 10, 2012Landfill Harmonic is a documentary filmed in Paraguay about an orchestra whose musicians—young residents of a slum built on top of a landfill—play instruments made from trash. Here’s the trailer, which opens with a beautiful quote from the orchestra director: “The world sends us garbage. We send back music.” Gives me chills. I can’t wait for this film to be released.
Like the project on Facebook, here. Thanks for the tip, Brigitte. I am sure we’ll be posting more on this project as the film is released.
Hurricane Sandy
Monday, October 29, 2012The entire East Coast of the United States seems to have shut down—public transport, schools, Broadway theaters, banks, the stock exchange—but trash collection is on for Monday in New York City. Pretty darn impressive. Feels like today is a good day to revisit Chasing Sanitation, an artistic tribute to New York’s Strongest in the form of portraits and collected stories.
Touch Sanitation
And, while we’re at it, it’s a good day to revisit the work of Mierle Landerman Ukeles, the Department of Sanitation’s artist in residence. Among other landmark trash-related installations, Ukeles is known for a performance piece she put on in 1984 called Touch Sanitation. Over 11 months, she shook the hand of every sanitation worker in the city and said “Thank you for keeping New York City alive.” Here’s a classic Talk of the Town on her work, via Feldman Gallery.
Stay safe, trashies.
Trashing Lebanon
Wednesday, August 15, 2012Al Jazeera English program Earthrise covers Lebanon’s trash mountain, Lebanese views on waste and consumption and the (B)IM Project performances featured here last Trashtastic Tuesday in the form of a Q&A with the creators.
Oh, Plastiksack!
Saturday, August 4, 2012The fabulous site inhabitat featured today Ida-Marie Corell‘s Ikea gown, the centerpiece of her installation in a show called “Oh, Plastiksack” at the Gewerbemuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland.
Ida-Marie Corell’s Ikea gown
In trying to find out more about both the artist and the show, I came across Corell’s wonderful Plastic Bag Blog, which I’ll be adding to the blogroll and trolling for content on the regular from now on. She also has a book out about plastic bags, German-reading trashies consider this an open call for a guest post review.
All Women Waste Workers
Sunday, July 22, 2012Feeling philanthropic? Rolando Politi, founder of the Yanbuki trash worshipers, has launched a fundraising campaign to support a project with women rag pickers in Delhi, India. The idea: teach the members of the women’s waste workers cooperative to make and sell trash art.
Trash flowers
The campaign states two aims, to generate income for the women and to destigmatize their work by creating something positive from the materials they collect.
For more on waste, recycling and the informal industry of rag picking in Delhi, check out the documentary Delhi Waste Wars.
Zabaleen, the movie
Friday, July 20, 2012A new documentary on the trash picking Zabaleen community of Cairo may peak the horizon. REORIENT, an online magazine featuring Middle Eastern arts and culture, this week profiles director and cinematographer Justin Kramer on the two-and-a-half year process of shooting Zabaleen.
photo via REORIENT
Kramer tells the reporter:
I had to spend a lot of time with these families before they trusted me enough. They’re very marginalised. What they do is sort of taboo, and they were reluctant to open up to an American guy who barely speaks the same language’
A moving and naturally-paced excerpt of the film entitled “Mourad’s Morning” can be viewed on VIMEO, which includes the following description:
Mourad’s mornings are all the same. He wakes up at 2am. Then, he fights to get his sons out of bed for an hour before leaving late for his garbage route in Shoubra.
This piece was submitted and accepted into Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School in London March 2011.
Sounds very promising.
A now-completed Kickstarter campaign includes a brief video message from Kramer and cites the blog The Zabaleen Project as the documentary’s website. It appears to be an interesting compilation of Zabaleen news, including an automated filter for the latest #zabaleen tweets.
Here’s hoping the final product makes the rounds on the film festival circuit and makes its way to screenings we can all attend. In the meantime, to bone up on Zabaleen issues, check out:
- everydaytrash.com’s review of the documentary Garbage Dreams,
- my Q & A with that film’s director,
- the sad incident a few years ago when the government killed all the Zabaleen’s pigs,
- NPR’s coverage of the Zabaleen solar cities, and
- an update on the Garbage Dream boys via an exclusive interview with an everydaytrash.com correspondent.
Trash Spectacles in Lebanon
Tuesday, July 17, 2012Today we revive the long dormant weekly feature, Trashtastic Tuesday, with an inspiring performance series. The (B)IM Project, short for books in motion, cites as its mission “to make theatre accessible in Lebanon by performing for free, in site -specific locations across Lebanon.”
Beirut
The company’s latest project is called “10453: A Story About Life in 1 km2 of Trash.” Kindly, writer/director Camille Brunel Aoun and Producer Denise Maroney agreed to answer a few questions for everydaytrash.com.
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everydaytrash: What is “10453: A Story About Life in 1 km2 of Trash”? How did the project come about?
The (B)IM Project: 10453 is a theatrical performance that combine dance, mime, clown, text and images related to the nightmare of our everyday life surrounded by trash. The play is a journey through the life and habits of 5 characters who deal with garbage, both consciously and unconsciously. The play offers metaphors for the absurdity of a society that ignores the dirt it is breathing in every day and the danger it is creating for itself.
The title “10453″ references the official square area of Lebanon ( 10,453 km2). We added an extra kilometer (10453) to allude to the growing kilometers of trash that are popping up across Lebanon’s coast (e.g. Saida trash mountain; Google it, if you don’t already know about it, you’ll be horrified!)
Group scene
The project began in 2011, when producer Denise Maroney was awarded a grant from the Theatre Communications Group to workshop a theatrical production in Lebanon, pertaining to the Mediterranean Sea. During this period, Maroney spent time examining topics related to Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast. The abundance of trash found on beaches and in the sea struck a chord. With director/writer Camille Brunel Aoun, the two began imagining a performance that would spotlight trash and question human behavior relating to waste.
everydaytrash: Where will the tour take the performance?
(B)IM: We began with performances on the boardwalks of major cities in Lebanon- Tyre, Sidon and Beirut. The boardwalks offered an appropriate location: a public, accessible place where land and sea meet. The backdrop of the sea provided a stunning effect and resonated within the story.
We are currently preparing to present this play in various festivals across Lebanon during Ramadan. In the fall, we hope to perform in schools and indoor theatres across Lebanon. And of course, we will be looking for opportunities to take this play into international theatre festivals!
Audience
everydaytrash: Several of your past performances have incorporated trash and recycled material, what do you see as the connections between theater and waste? Are there particular connections for Lebanese or more generally Middle Eastern societies?
Theater offers a space to re-imagine ‘waste.’ Lebanon, in particular, is a country surrounded by waste, namely rubble from post war de/re-construction and heaps of abandoned trash. By animating discarded material from the society we are living in, we are opening up imaginations and inviting our audience to creatively examine their environmental space.
One can also approach the relationship between theater and waste through the lens of legendary Polish director, Jerzy Grotowsky, and his ideas of a poor theatre: “Theatre must recognize its proper limitations. If the stage cannot be richer than cinema, let it then be poor. If it cannot be as lavish as television, let it be ascetic.” Thus, we use what surrounds us to create theatre. At the end of the day, you can create for a very low cost. It’s a positive and magical act to create “something” from very little.
Beach trash scene in Saida
everydaytrash: What’s next for The (B)IM Project?
(B)IM: We’re going to live with this play for a while… performing in different venues across Lebanon. Eventually, we want to perform it beyond Lebanon’s borders. Whether we tour in neighboring Middle Eastern countries, or beyond, 10453 is a play relevant to all citizens on this Earth.
Jamaica Bay Pen Project
Tuesday, June 26, 2012Remember Willis Elkins, the artist who collects cigarette lighters from the shores of New York City? His latest found art adventure involves not just collecting found objects, but restoring them.
The Haksiva
For the Jamaica Bay Pen Project, Elkins gives new life to pens that wash up on the shores of Jamaica Bay in Queens by cleaning them up and replacing the ink cartridges. Track the project here.
Rio+20+Trash
Tuesday, June 19, 2012Brazilian-born, New York-based artist Vik Muniz has set up his latest project in Rio de Janeiro, timed with Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Appropriately entitled Landscape, Muniz’ new work recreates Rio (the global capital of debate around the environment) entirely out of trash. You probably remember Muniz from the incredible documentary Waste Land.
Photo via the AP
As one whose day job revolves around international development, I was somewhat relieved not to have to go to Rio this week and participate in the organized chaos of assessing the state of sustainable development around the world. Women’s rights, my area of focus, don’t get much prominence on the agenda and I have many dutiful colleagues who trooped down to Latin America to remind world leaders that, as a Guatemalan colleague put it recently, “we can’t achieve sustainable development if women’s lives are unsustainable.”
Anyway, that is to say I was feeling pretty jaded and exhausted by the mere thought of all the hustle and bustle and tedious bureaucracy orbiting around a meeting of this size and pomp. Until I read about this new Vik Muniz endeavor. Suddenly, I’m jealous of all the activists and diplomats packed into conference rooms and pouring over the past twenty years of progress (or lack thereof) on issues of sustainability. Those bastards get to slip out and visit amazing trash art projects! I wonder what other creative efforts environmentally-minded artists have cooked up for this occasion.
Are you in Rio? Send updates and photos, please!
Women of Minyore
Monday, May 21, 2012Over the weekend, AfriGadget shared this wonderful short documentary by the Kenya-based Dutch journalist Ruud Elmendorp on trashpicking craftswomen near Nakuru.
The women, including Lucy Wambui, featured in a video and report on Elmendorp’s site, collect plastic bags from the dump and weave them into marketable goods. In an area of the world ravaged by poverty, HIV, domestic abuse and drug addiction, these women are bettering their lives and educating the next generation on the income they earn selling recycled plastic. Lucy, for example, pays her grandson’s school fees with part of her income.
I find this piece particularly compelling because I have been to Nakuru, spent the night in the national park for which the area is famed and even spent a night in town without ever crossing paths with a community of trashpickers. Elmendorp’s shot of the dump site with flamingo lake in the background beautifully illustrates the contrast between the two worlds. It reminds me of this photo, which I shared here in 2010, taken from the shore of the same lake.
Lake Nakuru
How different the planet appears from the other side of the looking glass.
