Remember Joshua Allen Harris‘ adorable air bear, air giraffe and eclectic air zoo? If the plastic bag polar bears in this Ad Council bit aren’t Harris’ work, they are based directly on it. It looks like air animals have gained an even more overt political voice—promoting public transport—than the obvious and embedded message (don’t litter).
I discovered this clip over on GreenMuze while browsing for more photos of the fabulous giant orange recycled bunnies I’d seen on Olympia Dumpster Divers this morning. Check them out.
Last night I saw two amazing short films from Haiti as part of fi:af’s World Nomads program. The first and more trash-relevent of the two was the international debut of a feature directed by Louis Ebby Angel and made in collaboration with his fellow students of Ciné Institute, the island nation’s first and only film school. As the name suggests, plastic is a theme incorporated in the plot. You can watch it in its entirety here.
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During the Q&A that followed, the director mentioned he had friends who use plastic in creative ways to draw attention to Haiti’s land and water pollution. He described elaborate costumes for carnival made of salvaged plastic. Rest assured, I am now on the hunt for images!
The second film was an INCREDIBLE documentary called Mrs. Little Bones (Madame Ti Zo) about a nearly hundred-year-old midwife praciticing in the hills of rural Haiti. It was directed by David Belle, founder of Ciné Institute and contains the most amazing closing credits sequence in the history of film. Track it down.
If you happen to pass through Litz, Austria, May 14-15th, you should head out to the Subversive Fair (somewhere in the docks, check website for directions), and check out Interacting Arts’ performance Dumpster Cooking.
Consists of two parts. The first part includes dumpster diving and collecting food for the performance. These excursions will be documented through video. The second part takes place at the fair where cooking of the retrieved goods will be carried out in public.
When the food is done everyone present is welcome to join in the meal. The cooking is done against a projected background of the earlier documented food retrieval.
As cream on top, Interacting Arts says the following about trash:
The middle class standpoint: Only trash consumes trash. It’s from this point of view that dumpster diving can be seen as not only an anti-capitalist way of survival but also a true rebellion against society as whole.
In other words, head for Litz, discover what those Austrians really eat! It can’t be all schnitzel, ya?
You know why I loved Decorative Dumpster Day? Because it gave me a festive sense of community and solidarity among garbloggers.Thanks again to all who participated in this international extravaganza. And start collecting decorative dumpster images for next year!
For those who missed the first annual adventure in group blogging about trash receptacles, here’s the roundup. Co-organizer and DDD logo designer Little Shiva was traveling and without solid internet connection on May 1, here’s her late breaking submissionà la française.
Be sure to also check out MS the Younger‘s 3-part entry on the lack of decorated dumpsters in Japan at MadSilence here, here and here.
A while back, FOUND Magazine founder Davy Rothbart sent out a call to some pretty famous storytellers and asked them to send him their best stories about things they’d found in the street or by accident. Or if they didn’t have such a story, to make one up. The published responses can be found in Requiem for a Paper Bag, an entertaining read so far, with submissions from a host of folks ranging from Chuck D. of Public Enemy to Susan Orlean of the New Yorker. Translation: literary trash of the highest caliber.
Curious Americans can catch Davy, his brother Peter and a selection of special guests performing songs and reading from found notes and letters as part of their patented Denim and Diamonds tour. Check listings for dates. For New Yorkers, the show is this Friday night. To get a vague notion of what they do, see the YouTube clip.
For those lucky cheeses who happen to pass through Washington D.C. (Leila, road trip!), the Smithsonian American Art Museum now shows the piece Common Threads by Jean Shin. It’s all true trash art, with high ambitions! How about modified old sports trophies, celebrating carpenters and waitresses? Big, fiery-looking light-thingies built from old bottles? Or my favourite, the stacks of $25,000 worth of lottery tickets with loosing numbers.
The exhibition runs until July 26, but the Smithsonian have discovered the Internetz, and on Flickr we can all view what things looked like when Common Threads was put up, hopefully also beyond the end of July. Lastly, I would like to recommend NPR’s coverage of Shin’s exciting work.
It’s here! It’s finally here! Here’s an early roundup of the gorgeous decorative dumpster images found around the garblogosphere today:
Co-host Ruby Reusable of Olympia Dumpster divers has photos of thepainted dumpsters of her communityas well as comprehensive links to tricked out dumpsters all over the Internets (we expect no less from the premier dumpster diving art blog);
unconsumption has a repost of this rad repurposed dumpster from Urban Prankster (this may be more of a happy coincidence on urban prankster’s part, though we like to think DDD has subliminal power).
More to come as participants send in their links. Stay tuned. And send your dumpster pics—today and every day.
Maria Ferm was kind to share two more deco dumpster pix she shot last summer. You have to love the gold bus stop dumster (that usually comes in something close to “coniferous forest green”).
Decorative dumpster at bus stop, Malmö
Container used by kiosks to return unsold tabloids, pimped
At two of my favourite stops on the underground back in Stockholm, Zinkensdamm and Hornstull (pronounce that in English), magnificent work has been done by someone or somebody, seriously competing with the original art that came with the station (to read more about the art, go here).
These pics come courtesy of Hanna Hård, generally excellent word nerd and co-editor of Swedish feminist blog Vi Som Aldrig Sa Sexist, and Maria Ferm, pizza expert and co-spokesperson for Green Youth, the Youth League of Swedish opposition party The Greens (and yes Maria also blogs).
It’s Decorative Dumpster Day, a day to reflect for a moment on the objects we use to contain waste. And to decorate them. In preparation for this day, I have spent some time thinking about dumpsters and graffiti and the fact that where you find one, you often find the other. The vibrant murals that coated the train yards and back alleys of my youth are hard to find these days in my city. It’s not easy to tell which is the chicken and which is the egg: more people ride the trains and walk the alleys, fewer artists put up their stuff. Anyway, I was touched by buzzygirl‘s photostream on flickr when I came across her series over time of Der Schlachthof, Germany. Check out the evolving landscape she captures at four points in time (and counting). Thanks for letting me share your work, buzzygirl. These photos capture the most basic relationship between trash, art and the potential unleashed when a fresh perspective is applied to a forgotten space.
If you haven’t heard of FOUND Magazine, check out the publication’s charming origin myth. Incidentally, FOUND founder Davy Rothbart has a book coming out called Requiem for a Paper Bag. Like all books about trash, I want to read it. Stay tuned.
…I root around online for trash tidbits. At home, I search Google News at least once a week for terms like “trash,” “garbage,” “solid waste,” “recycle,” and “compost,” but I rarely take the time to dig into specific sites for newly posted trashy treasures. Clearly I should more often. Just look what I found today searching Flickr for photos tagged “upcycled”.
PJ Harvey upcycled album bouquet via scribblenation on Flickr
As you know, everydaytrash.com is not a product pimping site. Of course, every once in a while we come across something made of trash with such a good story behind it, we just have to share. This evening, it’s these colorful bags made of old plastic bags by Conserve, a collective of women living in the slums of Delhi.
Sling Bag
Given the tabloid coverage of the little girl from Slumdog Millionaire this week, it’s refreashing to see a skills-building, income generating, women’s empowerment program from India with such bright and hopeful products.
everydaytrash 