Elocation

Elocation, 2010
Mixed media trash and glue
NURTURE art, Brooklyn, NY

Rule of interaction: You can take anything that isn’t glued down, and you can glue anything down.

Elocation was a trash-based social economy where anyone could take anything that wasn’t glued down, and they could glue anything down. The map depicts an area of East Brooklyn, New York, that suffers from gentrification. Elocation was meant to quantify the impulse to take things versus the impulse to keep things in place.

While many pieces were taken and many pieces were glued down, people also incorporated their own trash into the piece, redesigned (and sometimes solidified) “neighbourhoods” and tended to enjoy creating objects more than taking or owning objects. Brooklyn sprouted two space ports, houses on top of water towers, and an office building where workers were doing calisthenics on the roof, among other things. People were particularly fond of making very tall things.