...carefully packed in see-through boxes. Justin Cignac, a 25-year-old who walks around looking at the ground, collects the garbage himself.
Inside the box, there are plastic spoons, napkins, tickets...
"I sell garbage. I scour the New York City streets picking up trash. After filling bags with subway passes, tickets and other NYC junk, I carefully arrange plastic cubes full of the stuff. Each box is unique and won’t leak or smell. The cubes are signed, numbered, and dated, making them perfect for anyone who wants their own piece of the NYC landscape. Just get one now before they clean up the city."
This is how Justin Gignac introduces himself. This 25-year-old has created NYC Garbage, a web site where you can find all sorts of information about the sale of garbage from NY. This is not a joke: there’s a map on the web site showing who’s bought the garbage to date, there’s also a press room, a photo gallery... This guy really does sell garbage. Of course, it’s very clean and neatly presented in clear plastic boxes with a nice graphic title printed on them.
He assures the contents won’t smell or leak. Does he spend afternoons cleaning the stuff he finds on the street? Maybe that’s why his "garbage" doesn’t gross you out. In fact, it does just the opposite; it really makes you want to buy a box. Can you think of a better souvenir to bring back from a city like NY? Each box costs 50 dollars and he doesn’t charge for shipping.
It could easily pass for a designer item, like the ones they sell at MOMA shops. The difference is that the museum shop would never sell real garbage found in NY; they’d sell "replicas of garbage found in NY". This young Visual Arts graduate has a lot more merit. He’s a real urban explorer who gets his hands dirty picking up things that people have decided they no longer need, and then carefully packages them in a beautiful container.
Years ago, canned air from cities such as Paris and London was a smashing success, so it’s not surprising these boxes that say so much about a place would sell just as well. There’s no better way to get to know a city than by looking at the stuff people throw out.
Curioblog
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Inside the box, there are plastic spoons, napkins, tickets...
