Manhattan Polkadot
Renee Mlynaryk got in touch with SLAB recently to tell us about the New-York-wide art intervention TRASH: anycoloryoulike runnning throughout summer 2008.
Initiated by artist Adrian Kondratowicz, the project is as simple as it is poetic: in selected city blocks, normal black plastic rubbish bags are swapped for colourful polkadot versions, effectively turning whole neighborhoods into bright urban sculpture gardens on rubbish collection day.
This is one of those ideas which makes you ask basic questions about the familiar. Why are rubbish bags black, for example? What happens to a place, and people’s sense of place if they’re pink polkadot? And will people think differently about rubbish, and the amount of rubbish they produce daily, by drawing attention to the bags on the street? I’d love to think so.
