Cardboard surfboard frame via MAKE
This week around the garblogosphere:
Photo via New York Magazine
As you may have heard, a crew of 30 artists, gearheads and dumpster divers from Brooklyn rolled up to the Venice Biennial in a fleet of vessels made of New York City trash. They built the boats to resemble one the street artist Swoon saw in a dream.
While I have mixed feelings about the often self-congratulatory artistic happenings that come out of North Brooklyn and the street art scene in general, I can appreciate that my skepticism is both a bit knee-jerk and shared by the practictioners themselves. For example, I first learned about Swoon when I heard her speak on a panel on street art where divirsity came up a lot (in that self-conscious way it tends to in academic settings referencing hip hop culture), as did the fact that the mostly white street art scene (born of art schools) benefits from the same badass caché now afforded to grafitti (born of the ghetto) while the “risks” taken by the “outlaw” artists of today’s movement don’t match those taken by the bombers of the 80’s. Not by the farthest stretch of the imagination. Case in point: you’ll notice the NY Mag article uses Swoon’s real name repeatedly. Let’s see if she gets arrested for vandilism.
That said, potential jail time isn’t a prerequisite I use when judging art I like. And I truly enjoy the wheatpaste prints Swoon puts up around town. Sometimes, art is just pretty and fun. Bonus points for using trash.
“The culture of eating and building out of Dumpsters is not an endpoint, not what any of us wants to be doing,” Swoon says. “It’s about living off a bad culture that we wish didn’t exist and making the resources that contribute to that situation no longer available to you.”
For more on Swoon, I recommend searching the lovely and amazing clearinghouse, Wooster Collective. That’s how I found this Walrus TV video.
Hey, Victor, note that they may take these trash ships to the Copenhagen climate change meeting. Now that might spice things up!
Can’t get enough? More photos are over at PSFK.
Treehugger reports that proposed legeslation in San Francisco opens for harsh fines for residential and commercial building owners who fail to make sure trash from their tenants is recycled, and recylced properly. According to Treehugger, such legislation exists in several places already in the US, but not with fines.
Makes me think of yesterday, when a note was posted at my front door. Intrigued as you always are by notes, I read it, although it was addressed to my landlord. It turned out to be notice of a $300 fine for placing plastic for recycling on the curb on the wrong day of the week.
This focus on building owners is very different to my homeland of Sweden, where, as I have described earlier, the responsability for recycling lies with the individual person. And they say we’re the commies..
The headline to the latest Guardian UK photo series In Pictures says it all: “World’s poor overwhelmed by rubbish.”
Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
UPDATE: See also this horrifying slideshow in e-waste in West Africa via Waking Vixen‘s Facebook page.
Robin Nagle, anthropologist in residence for New York City’s Department of Sanitation, is giving a talk on the Freshkills landfill as a sacred space. This extraspecial event will take place on the North mound at said landfill on Saturday, June 20th, starts at noon. New Yorkers, follow the link to RSVP.
Today the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co (SKB), the entity tasked with finding out where and how to store Sweden’s ultra dangerous radioactive trash, decided on where they will recommend the construction of the long term repository. The winner is Östhammar, a municipality with just over 21,000 inhabitants in southeast Sweden.
At today’s press conference, representatives of the municipality were serious-looking and happy, having beat the municipality Oskarshamn in the race to become nuclear trash spot no 1, they of course talked wide about cooperation, but it’s an ill kept secret that people in power back in Östhammar are jubilant over this decision.
One might find it odd that two municipalities would compete and advocate that they have the best mountain core for nuclear trash, but it just goes to show the power of tra$h, I guess, nuclear being the ultimate trash after all. That, or people are just outright bonkers. To learn all about how the final disposal will happen, check out the 101 on nuclear trash storage at the SKB website.
UPDATE: Follow this link to Swedish newspaper Uppsala Nya Tidning to see pix of Östhammar storage site boss celebrating with cake. The local government commissioner cried tears of joy (yes, she did). Then take a look at the most important YouTube clip ever about #cake. (Many thanx to @gerontedodedon for inspiration.)
everydaytrash 