packaging as content

July 15, 2009

Waste Not: Song Dong at Moma

Photo from 16 Miles of String’s Flickr Photostream

Song Dong’s “Waste Not” installation, now on view at MoMA: “A collaboration first conceived of with the artist’s mother, the installation consists of the complete contents of her home, amassed over fifty years during which the Chinese concept of wu jin qi yong, or "waste not," was a prerequisite for survival.”

In yesterday’s NY Times:

When Mr. Song’s father died, in 2002, his mother was inconsolable. She continued to live in the jammed Beijing house, throwing nothing away and obsessively bringing more stuff into it, as if continuing to feather a nest for a now-absent family. And despite the threatened destruction of the surrounding area, she would make no move that entailed parting with her possessions.

Finally, in 2005, Mr. Song proposed that they turn the accumulated junk into an art project. In this way, he argued, nothing would be discarded and lost; everything would be meaningfully recycled and preserved. His mother agreed to this and together, with the help of Ms. Yin and Mr. Song’s sister, Song Hui, they emptied the premises.

from The Collected Ingredients of a Beijing Life
by Holland Cotter, New York Times, July 14, 2009

Photo from 16 Miles of String’s Flickr Photostream

As I always like to point out, anyone who’s disinclined to throw stuff away, invariably winds up collecting a lot of packaging.

Remarkable that so much stuff could fit into so small a structure. Perhaps, Mr. Song’s mother (Zhao Xiangyuan) was a more efficient packer—(see: packing problem)—than the usual Collyer-Brothers-style American hoarder. Here in the states, this type of hoarding is considered a kind of character defect, but it sounds as if, in China, hoarding might be considered something closer to a virtue.

In the U.S. we have voyeuristic TV shows and prurient news stories that delight in showing us the squalid living conditions of “hoarders.” In Waste Not, however, Mrs. Zhao’s accumulated possessions are neatly arranged in categories, as in a store. So while the scale of her collection may seem compulsive, it doesn’t seem squalid.

(More photos, after the fold…)

Photo on left; from 16 Miles of String’s Flickr Photostream; Photo on right: Todd Heisler/The New York Times