Stop the war on clutter!

There’s so much smugness out there about simplifying and paring down. All those self-improvement reality shows that begin with throwing away all your clothes or all your furniture or both. I have a friend who says that for every new possession you need to get rid of five old things.

And it is very satisfying to go through your stuff and get rid of things. It gives me a great sense of accomplishment to fill boxes or bags with stuff I don’t need and get it out of my life. Such moral clarity.


But lately I’ve been thinking it’s a really easy virtue. The hard thing would be to stop consuming, but paring down or ending clutter usually means buying more stuff.

I propose we try to live by a much harsher moral imperative. Keeping everything we consume, including the packaging.




Forever.

Introducing The Styrene Fantastic Blog

The first Styrene Fantastic performance is tomorrow. The project has already grown so big it's taking up the whole sidewalk, so I'm moving it to a new home, The Styrene Fantastic blogsite.




We're all still family, so Sidewalks will still be getting updates from Styrene. But this is the place to find pictures of fences and drains and sidewalks (and styrofoam in drains on sidewalks) and The Styrene Fantastic is the place to look for performance videos, photographs, updates and other documentation.

A little Non-dancer Dance Practice

My dance costumes are coming along, here's an unfinished "Fainting Couch" modeled by me, non-dancer extraordinaire.

The Styrene Fantastic will premiere at Rachel Uffner Gallery on Sunday April 26th, as part of the Movement Research Festival

Barbies Dance the Styrene Fantastic

A performance (starring the styrofoam) danced en maquette. Actual performance and performers coming soon -- stay tuned for details!

"Fainting Couch"

"Fainting Couch" in action

"Bench" and "Fainting Couch"

"Chaise"

And be sure to stick around for the after party!

Rescue Mission in Park Slope!

On Saturday while walking across the park to the bank I suddenly saw this on Garfield Place:


All this clean white styrofoam in the trash! I know the city picks up Christmas trees, but it doesn’t recycle styrofoam. I am actually quite self-conscious about trash picking, but this was too much to let go. Also, way too much to carry in my hands.


So after depositing my checks, I had to do a quick calculation: would buying plastic garbage bags just to carry styrofoam home offset the good done by rescuing it?

But of course, I’m not really saving the planet, I’m saving styrofoam! So I bought recycled plastic bags, but art was always going to win this battle anyway. I would have bought bottled water if that was going to help me get this sweet styrene into my studio!

On the way back to the site, I was so excited my heart was pounding. I was sure someone else would beat me to it, and that my styrofoam would be gone.

Not only was it still there, it seemed to have spawned.


Walking across the park was also a nice little performance piece**. Everyone stared at me, one woman stopped me to ask what it was -- it’s funny that carrying styrofoam turns out to be more provocative than crawling around a subway grate in knee pads.


**Interaction is my preferred word for this kind of piece, actually.

My own private landfill

As many of you know, I've been collecting styrofoam from my friends and neighbors for a few months now. I could rhapsodize about the material forever, but right now I want to focus more on the accumulation. It's taking up quite a bit of real estate in my studio. It's pretty amazing that a few posts to a few yahoo lists can generate this much styrofoam.



I've always had a very local and personal response to the problem of consumer waste. Our apartment gets perilously close to being a collier mansion, not because I'm such a hoarder -- I don't really want the stuff, or picture a future for it -- but because I can't bear to add it to a landfill, or worse, send it off floating on a barge forever.

Now I read that (as usual) I've simply been a little ahead of the trend. This week's NY Times reports that as the demand for materials to recycle falls, cities and people are being forced to store their own paper, bags, bottles &c.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/08recycle.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink