Reframing New York City’s Garbage

August 08, 2009 ↓ 0 Comments

New York City artist Justin Gignac has created an artistic product—which is essentially trash—and he is selling it to people all over the world via the Internet. New York City is known for many things and garbage is one of them. You can easily find cans, plastic forks, tin foil, used metro cards, napkins, and paper cups on the streets and sidewalks all over the five boroughs. So why on earth would someone want to pay for that trash and then display it on their desk or shelf? Because Justin has reframed the trash and turned it into an object of desire.

New York City Garbage are tiny plastic sealed (smell-proof) cubes that contain an array of trash lovingly collected and arranged by the artist himself. The cubes sell for $50 each, unless they are part of the Yankee opening day series in which case they double in price.

NYC Garbage

I used to be a New Yorker and the above image reminds me very much of Union Square, where I used to live. The Starbucks cup took me by the Starbucks on Astor Place and the Metro Card feels of the subway that I rode so often. Although I will not pay $50 for a plastic box of trash, there are plenty of people who will pay $50 for a smart piece of art that reminds them of the city that never sleeps. And therein lies the genius of this work.

The artist identified something that the city is known for—a characteristic that is usually seen as a negative—and he turned it into something positive, a work of art. He transformed the garbage from what it once was into something of value. Let’s face it, when you are in New York, the trash on the street is part of what gives you that nitty-gritty NYC feeling. Why wouldn’t it do the same if it were sitting on your desk in a cube on the other side of the world?

The artist is crucial in all of this. First of all, without the artist the trash is just sitting on the sidewalk waiting to be collected by sanitation workers. Anyone could collect some trash and take it home with them—but they don’t. It’s a very New York City thing to do to support a clever artist who goes and handles the trash for you. The art and the artist are a necessary part of the transformation and it is the reframing of the garbage into a neatly packaged art object that causes the paradigm shift.

Imagine that some guy from Bayonne, NJ got the idea to seal NYC trash in a cube and sell it to the souvenir shops on Times Square. He hires a bunch of illegal workers to sift through piles of rubble all day and assemble the cubes by using a formula (three colors, no two same types of trash in one cube). Suddenly tourists are purchasing trash cubes for $14.95 each and they’re flying off the shelves. It becomes a completely different, although believable, story. (I prefer Justin Gignac’s story and am glad he got there first.)

Check out the NYC Garbage website and choose a cube for yourself. If that’s not your thing, find some trash in your life and transform it into art!

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