What up New York? Looking for a positive way to spend the afternoon of 9/11? Why not mosey down to Bed-Stuy for the grand opening of the Brooklyn Free Store? A bunch of local artists/scavengers/dumpster divers have claimed an abandoned lot and taken to using it for the swapping of skills and stuff on weekends. I plan to check it out for myself this Saturday. Hope to see you there.
Grand Opening Announcement
Good Samaritans leaving water for migrants on the harsh trails between Mexico and Arizona risk going to jail under the state’s strict litter law. The Washington Independent recaps a fascinating TIME article on the subject here.
The NYT magazine has an amazing photo essay up on the computer waste trade in the Agbogbloshie slum of Accra, Ghana.
via unconsumption
Look out hipsters, dumpster pools have gone mainstream—for several Saturdays this summer, the city is closing off part of Park Ave so that people can swim in pools made from old trash receptacles. While Vic and I did lament not getting invited to take a dip in one last summer when we kept hearing about hidden pools in Brooklyn, I can’t imagine anything less fun than stripping down to a swim suit and aqua dumpster diving with strangers on Park Ave. A for effort, though, New York City.
Photo by David Belt via Green Picks blog
via Green Picks blog (thanks for the tip, Brendan!)
Rolando Politi, spiritual leader of the Yanbuki trash worshippers, recently organized a trip to the utopian neithborhood of Christiania, Copenhagen.
Kappo and Lady Kappo
An email summary of events states:
to all world yanbukis, here are the links for the kappo tour and ceremony from this july.
Findings: they never thought about collecting and cleaning and repackaging caps and lids before KAPPO was introduced.
Future: great potential for a bottom up start up of cap enterprise anywhere in the world!
hungry people and redeemers and also creatives should contact [recycleandpray AT gmail DOT com] for more details and know how.
The Trash Worship Network
expanding trash spirituality for ten years and going
Fresh caps
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U.S. military bases in Afghanistan (the site of that war to the right of Iraq, just past Iran) generate a lot of trash—tons in fact. That trash is burned and generates a lot of smoke which is making U.S. service men and women as well as military rent-a-soldiers from big outsourcing companies ill. Those soldiers are now suing. The Washington Post reports:
In a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland, 241 people from 42 states are suing Houston-based contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, which has operated more than two dozen so-called burn pits in the two countries. The burn pits were used to dispose of plastic water bottles, Styrofoam food containers, mangled bits of metal, paint, solvent, medical waste, even dead animals. The garbage was tossed in, doused with fuel and set on fire.
For more details, such as lovely descriptions of the stuff the affected soldiers have been coughing up and other side effects of toxic exposure, click here. Be sure also to click through the haunting photo timeline beginning way back in 2001 and full of haunting images and once-familiar faces like Rummy and Powell.
via Newser
In China, following serious flooding, several cities are now under threat from large islands of trash blocking water flows, potentially causing more flooding. In the city of Baishan, a 160,000 square feet trash island has parked under a bridge. If this floating monument of weirdness isn’t cleared soon, the bridge might collapse, according to the Straits Times.
The Guardian has a picture and a fuller story on the threat at the Three Gorges dam. One can only hope that Chinese authorities have the boldness to rewrite the crisis plan for things-to-do-when-a-flood-comes to include some more garbage workers upstream. Then again, as per usual, the amount of trash to begin with is the problem.
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You know how in movies set in Vegas the dealers are forever opening new decks of cards? Well, that happens in real life, too. And one resourceful designer thought of a clever way to reuse those cards: as the building material for a chair. Benjamin Rollins Caldwell and colleagues at BRC designs created the “Deuces Wild Chair.” It comes in two colors: red cards and blue cards. One question remains: how much does something like this cost? To view the company’s price list you have to register as a store. I’ll try calling when I have a moment. In the meantime, if you find out, spill!
Deuces Wild Chair from BRC Designs
via Greenopolis
Roosevelt Island sure is a trash-conscious part of town. Earlier this year I went to check out their trash tubes. Now the island is host to a trashtastic artsy event where people gather old wood, build a wall and decorate it. Please send photos if you go!
via nonsensenyc:
Conscious Cycle is a filmed interactive art event that brings artists and community members together in an effort to explore, educate, and learn about Conscious living and life’s Cyclical nature.
Conscious Cycle consists of the following: We reclaim discarded wood, build a wall out of it and invite artists to paint the wall, one after the other, while being filmed for a time-lapse movie. Mural themes revolve around Consciousness and Cycles. Throughout the event DJs play music, dancers perform, internal artists like yogis and tai chi practitioners teach and demonstrate, artists collaborate, and community members are encouraged to interact with the materials and us.
Three years old, this 8th Conscious Cycle goes down on Roosevelt Island this Saturday and Sunday. It’ll be full of conscious good times, suitable for all ages and it’s free. Please join in and explore your creativity. Plus we like to dance and the music is always great, come get down to the sights and sounds.
Conscious Cycle has been creating their interactive art environment at Figment on Governors Island since 2008, and they are excited to bring their vibe to another island! Come join us for another live painting event this Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have bucket and spray paint. You bring your specific supplies. Let’s make more art.
Roosevelt Island
Right behind the F train stop
Saturday, July 31 and Sunday, August 1
12-5p both days; $free
bit.ly/aO8rvP
bit.ly/8XiXwK
Wow, it’s tipster day. Amy just sent these photos from a Junk to Funk display at the Portland airport. Thanks, Amy!
Junk to Funk
Dress made from recycled blinds
Dress made from recycled coffee filters
Dress made from recycled yogurt spoons
I can’t decide which is my favorite dress. I can say that airports are one of my favorite places to see art. More airports should fight layover lameness with public art.
Artist Paul Lloyd Sargent just dropped a note to share this amusing anecdote. In short: while collecting trash around Brooklyn Bridge Park for a new art project, he encountered some competition…from THREE separate groups cleaning up Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Paul
You may remember Paul from his trash rivers project last summer. Thanks for the link, Paul. We’re looking forward to updates on your future work.
Good news. If you didn’t have a chance to catch Lixo extraordinário (Waste Land) or weren’t in New York the one day it was playing last week at MoMA, you may soon have another opportunity. The documentary is scheduled for wide release in October. This description from the Huffington Post makes me even more eager to catch it when it comes to town for real.
via Huffington Post
The most poignant film in [MoMA’s Premiere Brazil film] festival is Waste Land, which documents the Brazilian artist Vick Muniz as he works collaboratively with catadores (garbage pickers) in Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, located in Rio de Janeiro. Muniz works with the catadores to produce large scale portraits of the workers. The portraits are composed of the recyclable materials they collect over a three year period. The images are later auctioned and the proceeds go to the workers and the organization that advocates on their behalf.
The journey of their process goes far beyond the traditional scenarios of victims and saviors,Waste Land chronicles the emotional evolution of all the people involved but also challenges the viewer’s perception of their own community, class, and consumption.
Adorable. via Boing Boing via unconsumption
Spotted in Belgium
everydaytrash 