From the Wee Productions series “Masters at Work”
The dumpster in this post is headquartered at Hahamongna Park. During NewTown Arts recent “Art in the Park” weekend, the performance artist Pasadena Adjacent brought her “new age” piece “Dumpster Dive Potlatch” to the people. This collaborative effort is now documented and available for your viewing pleasure. Future “Wee” video productions of the NewTown weekend event forthcoming
and yes, getting it cheap still remains part of the esthetic: take notes
Pasadena Adjacent Legal Council
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“Dumpster Dive Potlatch” took place in the Hahamongna parking lot adjacent to NewTown’s information desk. Items retrieved from the dumpster and given to the awaiting public (Larry Wilson from the Pasadena Star News among the takers) included rolls of emory cloth. four working locks. numerous hand tools.tool box. numerous units of baggage .nail containers.nails.
rebar.bricks.glass display table.working flashlight.lamp finel.kodac slide projector.sand paper etc
About Trash Tuesday
In my neighborhood, trash collection takes place on a Tuesday. The night before is a good time to canvas the neighborhood for castaways. It’s great sport. I use Tuesday on this blog to post my treasures. The phrase “getting it cheap is part of the esthetic’ was coined by my photographer friend D Gordon
I find the plaid overnight case particularly fetching. I can see my Fabio carrying that for me, three mincing steps behind.
To be honest, I’ve never been dumpster diving but I retrieve things from the curb all the time and I never go on a walk that I don’t bring something home. A while ago I did a post about three things I found on one walk and what I did with them. People were so grossed out that I would take home found objects. No wonder we’re going down the tubes, if you think everything comes from the mall and then disappears when you get tired of it then maybe you’re not thinking. At all.
My neighborhood has a great tradition of putting unwanted items curbside. Eventually, someone takes them. And then there’s Freecycle, a real grab fest. I can’t tell you how much stuff I’ve given away. Lastly, my van is 10 years old and I’m not buying a new one until it becomes insufferable. That puts me on the outs with all kinds of people. I don’t care.
Is that really you inside? Cool! Nice to meet you.
I really miss American throwaways. Next time I visit the son in LA maybe you and I can go dumpster diving together, eh?
Sorry, I don’t remember about the camel kashrut discussion. You sure it wasn’t giraffe?
There WAS a story about the scrolls and the Huntington, in 1991.
Wow, that’s long. (not anymore Dina..PA maintains editing privileges and create links)
I love diving, who’s the fellow with the lovely Dylanesque voice softly mouthing glass and brass?
I happened to be in Flintridge the other day and came across a recently-sold home. You know how they stage the interior these days? Well after the staging, some beautiful large pillows (the outdoor kind, for furniture) were laying by the curb along with material and some other stuff.
Score!
Oh, man. I’m jealous over the stuff AH found. That outdoor fabric is expensive.
Rejected Footage from Dumpster Dive Potlatch
I especially like it when the item I want is gently left outside the trash can. I’ve never been in a dumpster; indeed, I was an adult before I ever heard the word “dumpster.”
I’m worried about rats and creepy crawly things. How do you know they aren’t diving with you? Do you ever worry about that?
Gee, I was really grumpy this morning. No more blogging before noon for me.
That green suitcase so 50′s! I love it!
Really great wee vids. And so interesting yet a little saddening the way Mr. V’s voice has changed so much since I was in your lives. V’s voice used to be so gentile and deferential, with its thoughtful and resonate warmth. Always asking your opinion, never telling you what to do. Now it has that rugged, almost blues singer quality of a homeless man, used to dumpster diving, and needing to instruct you in a way that I don’t remember. It is so beautiful that you share this morphic likeness of our real world with us (we all). I am going to really insist that my friends here at the Blithe Penal Institution Library get with this blog.
Thanks again so much, and for all the years we shared before I got into the sub-prime thing. I love you PA.. And to anyone out there, anyone reading this, I love you all too.
Great work, PA. Did you snag all that brass?
Years and years ago before I moved here I was visiting with my sister and we got a Star map and did a series of photos called “Celebrity Trash.” It wasn’t a double entendre… it was pictures of us holding up things we found in various trash cans of the rich and famous. I remember Barbara Striesand threw away some really nice bras.
The only thing worse than someone going through your trash, is someone not going through your trash – Oscar Wilde. Or something like that. Last week I retrieved a perfectly good 60s era pole lamp on the curb just down the street.
I am not amused
Please tell your merry band of misfits to cease and desist. This is the second time you’ve availed yourself on our organization uninvited. There are proper channels to go through if you wish to become a respectable artist. I suggest you follow them. You have proved yourself to be once again “a persistent weed in the garden of art”
Go away
Regards,
New/Town Art
busted
LMFAO. Richard, you’re the cutest thing about New/Town Art and I’ll bet my bootie that buried in your sarcastic comment you actually are AMUSED. WTF, New/Town’s motto IS “a persistent weed in the garden of art” xox C
People love freebies more then art so why not combine the two
I’m honored to discover that Richard Anronin from NewTown Art has chastised me in a scathing comment.. mission accomplished!; a job well done. Thank you Richard and thank you fellow participants Mr.V, Mr.G, and Mrs.E. for your participation in “Dumpster Dive Potlatch”. A performance piece where objects begot by way of a dumpster were distributed to a art hungry audience during the run of NewTown’s half mile art walk in Hahamongna Park.
PJ: A morning rant and a cup of coffee are good for the sole. No apologies necessary. When folks start feeling a tad sanctimonious over their Pirus’ I’m here to remind them that the SUV they traded in didn’t go to SUV heaven but back on the road.
Dina: Like you in a past post, I’m holding the camera while Mr.V in the white shoes distributes the goods. Mrs.E (out of the frame; is working the crowd). Mr.G is in the dumpster calculating the numbers.
(do you have the giraffe link?)
Christina: welcome, I see you get it…brava. However did you find me?
AH: Yup, thats a serious score. I’ve been looking for something up that ally (a pun kind-of)
Susan: Don’t know if it’s still there but I used to go to a store on Garvy in El Monte. Not only cheap fabric but tons of weird stuff. A box full of bra straps. It was Nirvana for me back when I produced installations
Jean: That was Mr.V’s doing. Did you see the 1940′s Kodak slide projector? I’ve been diving nearly my entire life. I am an adherent of getting something for nothing
Margaret: I kept a black widow as a pet. Does this answer your question. btw, I’m going to need the recipe for that casserole of yours. A potluck this way commeth, and I’d like to be unembarrassed for once.
Vanda: they remind me of Lazy Boy easy chairs
Chef King: Your still in our lives..always! Christina hears Dylan and you hear a bossy homeless man and I’m rolling with laughter. Please, I beg of you, share my blog with the Blithe Penal Colony. Rumor has it that the guards are french…true or false?
Laurie: Was your sister able to get any of it into a gallery? Do you remember when someone posted Madonna’s trash in Star? Better yet, were you two the sellers, back in the day when you fought crime with Aqua Net.. (whisper: you can trust me, I won’t tell anyone).
D: I’m running a google search on the Oscar W. quote. Better not come back to this blog! I’m facing the big one at the end of the month..a gift perhaps?
John E: yes and no
Christina: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Oh, sorry, you had me confused saying you were now a performing artist in the video. I kinda thought that was a strange voice for you to have. Glad it’s not you.
Listen, I made another booboo, in my own post on the urn. Please come back and read my confession/retraction/correction.
Will look for the giraffe info. But why…?
Dina: you have a point. Keep artist, drop performance and then add cinematographer to my list of growing accomplishments.
Why? not real sure..I guess the idea of biblical scholars sitting around debating scripture over giraffe milk strikes me as funny.
Isn’t it interesting how “performance” as a genre of the plastic arts is still avant-garde because people don’t know about it? illiterate and ignorant of contemporary culture. Fo edification, a performing artist is somebody on Amerikan Idol or performing at the follies this summer in your home town. An artist engaged in performed activity, structured and planned (even improvised) is acting through a vehicle intended to engage human behavior and poetics, usually in ways that allow meaning differently than painting, sculpture, drawing, literature, the most traditional mechanisms of art. Please don’t be “Condescending”, you will never grow. Climbing into a dumpster and discussing it or recording it (documenting) the activity with the lowliest of high tech methods ( cell phone video?) should not be confused with serious tap dancing or even Kabuki. If you are interested in performance art look into the Futurists, the Dadaists (1910 to 1930’s ) the Fluxists, the Situationists ( 40’s to 60’s ), Allan Kaprow, father of the art happening (50’s through the 2000 whatever, dead now) Vito Aconcci, poet become performance artist become architect, and thousands upon thousands of really interesting and innovative artists who don’t tap dance or try to get jobs acting in pharmaceutical adds during prime time news broadcasts. Turn off your tv. The world awaits you. God bless you