praxis | Max Liboiron

Object Ethnography Project

August 7, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Object Ethnography Project, 2011-present Online exchange platform Access and participate in the Object Ethnography Project here. Rule of exchange: You can take anything if you pay with a story about it. Each of the objects in the Object Ethnography Project has been donated by an ordinary person. Each object has a story. All these objects are available for exchange. You, or anyone else, can trade for any object by offering a new story about it. What attracts you to the […]

Categories: Art • Tags: alternative economy, anonymous trading, ethnography, material culture, narrative economy, object ethnography, praxis, story exchange, trade

Steady-State

August 6, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Steady-State: Development Without Growth, 2011 Mixed media, trash New Museum, Festival of Ideas for the New City & Sneak Peak, Freshkills Landfill Rule of interaction: You can touch, change, build and destroy anything, but nothing can leave or come into the “city.” Steady-State illustrates a steady-state economy as visitors shape a miniature model city made of New York City’s waste. Within the piece, the overall number of buildings, green spaces, and other urban infrastructures stayed the same, but people rearranged, […]

Categories: Art • Tags: alternative economies, art, economic art, participatory art, praxis, steady-state economy, urban planning art

Rubbish Topographies

August 5, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Rubbish Topographies, 2011 Mixed media, used tea bags, trash Touchstones Nelson, Nelson, BC, Canada Rule of interaction: Send the artist clean, dry tea bags as raw materials for an art installation. Rubbish Topographies is a landscape made of donated trash. Although the pile of tea bags and cardboard may bring to mind the panicked adage that, “we make too much garbage!”, it symbolizes something further. Every tea bag was saved, dried, and delivered by the artist’s family, friends, friends-of-friends, coworkers, […]

Categories: Art • Tags: crowd sourcing art, generosity tally, gift economy, praxis, tea bag art, trash art

Material Afterlife

August 5, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Material Afterlife: Circulation, 2009-present. Trash, mixed media Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA), Grand Rapids, MI Rule of exchange: You can take anything at any time as long as you fill out a survey detailing where it is going. Material Afterlife: Circulation is an installation made entirely of scavenged trash. Each of the 139 lawns and 70 cars are available to be taken away by gallery visitors at any time. In exchange, visitors must update the whereabouts of the piece […]

Categories: Art • Tags: circulation, information exchange, mapping waste, participatory installation, praxis, trash art

The Dawson City Trash Project

August 5, 2013 by Max Liboiron

The Dawson City Trash Project, 2008 Mixed media, trash ODD Gallery, KIAC, Dawson City, YK The Dawson City Trash Project is a miniature diorama of the current and historical garbage sites in Dawson City, Yukon. All of the raw materials used to create the miniatures are scavenged from these dump sites, and because visitors to the gallery had technically provided the materials for the exhibit, every piece of the installation was free to take away. The project enacts a landfill […]

Categories: Art • Tags: alternative economies, alternative economy, economic art, installation, participatory economy, participatory installation, particopatory art, praxis, trash art

Eco-System

August 5, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Eco-system, 2005-present. Mixed media, cubes 3 x 2.5″ Rules of Exchange: You can buy any diorama for $20. Once you buy a diorama, you can either take it with you, in which case you take a Polaroid of it to mark its departure (and the money goes to the artist), or you can leave it behind in a preserved area, where no one else can take it (and the money goes to local preservation efforts). Eco-system began as a collection […]

Categories: Art • Tags: art economy, participatory art, praxis, preservation art, record keeping, tally chart

Environmental Monitoring Wallpaper

August 5, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Environmental Monitoring Wallpaper, 2010 Filters, mixed media, pollutants Environmental Monitoring Wallpaper is a DIY prototype for visualizing potential pollutants in the home. One filter is made of fine mesh nylon with a plastic resit pattern that I placed over a leaking bathtub facet. The result: brown stains, probably indicating iron from the pipes. The second is an air filter with a lung-like pattern stenciled onto it. After being in my air purifier for a month, I could see how much […]

Categories: Art • Tags: activist art, citizen science, environmental art, environmental health, environmental monitoring, interventionist art, praxis