trash art | Max Liboiron

Trash Transformation

August 7, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Trash Transformation, 2013 Mixed media trash Fleming Museum, Burlington, VT Trash Transformation is a participatory art piece commissioned by the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont for its High Trash exhibition. There are two rules of interaction for the piece: 1. You can touch, move, and rebuild any part of the model city. Take a photograph of what you’ve created and upload to trashtransformation.tumblr.com so we can watch the evolution of the model over time. 2. You can take […]

Categories: Art • Tags: broken window syndrome, participatory art, trash art

Founder/Worker

August 6, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Founder/Worker, 2011 Trash, mixed media Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center, Bronx, NY, USA Rule of interaction: When you build something for the city, you can either have your name recorded as a founder of the city, or you can be paid $5 as an anonymous worker. In Founder/Worker, visitors are invited to build part of a miniature New York City out of trash. Participants can them make a choice about what kind of credit they’d like for their […]

Categories: Art • Tags: alternative economy, community art, cultural capital, New York City, participatory art, participatory installation, trash art, volunteer 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

Elocation

August 5, 2013 by Max Liboiron

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 […]

Categories: Art • Tags: art as urban planning, gentrification art, participatory art, trash, trash art, urban planning 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

Environmental Monitoring Dioramas

August 5, 2013 by Max Liboiron

Environmental Monitoring Diorama Series, 2009-2010 Trash, mixed media, various sizes While scavenging for Styrofoam from the old Dawson City dock in the Yukon, I noticed that huge holes had been dissolved or eaten into the plastic material. This had all happened underwater while the dock had been in service. Chemicals in the local Yukon River, where local people fished, dissolved Styrofoam. I used the damaged materials as the basis for a series of miniature northern landscapes; the pollutants did the […]

Categories: Art • Tags: environmental art, environmental monitoring, found objects, miniature dioramas, pollution monitoring, trash art