britticisms:

glamorouswhimsy:

Justin Gignac, a graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, picks up trash off of the streets of New York City. But, you won’t find him in a sanitation department uniform. He actually fills bags with subway passes, Broadway tickets, coffee cups, phone book pages, and other NYC junk and carefully arranges them in plastic cubes, which are then signed, numbered, and dated in slick Helvetica typeface and sells them for 50 smackers — “making them perfect for anyone who wants their own piece of the NYC landscape,” he says.

Gignac has sold over 1,000 of his trash cubes, each unique, leak-free, and smell-free. The initiative to repurpose trash spawned from a conversation with a colleague who said package design wasn’t important; “I figured the only way to prove them wrong would be to try to package something that absolutely nobody in their right mind would ever want to buy,” he rebutted. A fresh way to look at recycling … or exporting: his cubes can now be found in 41 states and 91 countries.

Via: CasaSugar

This is truly fascinating. It definitely signifies the complete commodification of modern society. It also reminds me of the Salman Rushdie short story, “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers.”

 Oh wow I want one… haha.