Sept 4, 2005
Trash for sale
IF YOU'VE holidayed in New York City and want a memento of your stay, log on to
www.nycgarbage.com and order a cube of the city's finest garbage.
It's more than just trash-talk.
In a bizarre art project, a New Yorker named Justin Gignac has been selling cubes stuffed with the city's trash for a tidy sum of US$50 (S$85, below) each.
You can place orders for the cubes - which are signed, numbered and dated - on his website.
He says they don't leak or smell, so you won't be raising a stink with environment authorities here.
In an e-mail interview with LifeStyle, Gignac, 25, says he has sold almost 800 cubes since he started the business about four years ago. His works have been shipped to 19 countries.
He came up with the idea during a summer internship when he was still a student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
'A group of us were having a discussion about the importance of packaging and someone claimed that package design wasn't important.
'I figured the only way to really know if your package design is successful is to try to package something nobody would ever want. Garbage made perfect sense.'
One of his most valued finds has been 'a piece of junk mail from supermodel Heidi Klum', but otherwise there's 'nothing too valuable yet'.
But has anyone turned up his nose in protest? 'I've gotten only a few e-mail from people who weren't too impressed,' he says.
'One guy from Australia went through the effort to make his own trash sculpture in a clear plastic McDonald's cup. He arranged a bunch of trash inside and included a note in it that read 'Your Art Sucks'.
'I was flattered he took the time to do that.'
Sandra Leong
