Weird Deer

Below are pictures of the latest foray into the art of trash-matching. I believe these examples may push this genre of art making to the limit and represent the latest advances of this exciting use of walking and picture-taking combined.

I set out to actually match some trash on a beach in Mexico, but the volume of detritus that an ocean can reflect back to human kind is overwhelming. I discovered that with too much to choose from, similar matches became very hard indeed. So rather than the traditional trash-matching one has become familiar with, I decided to do trash-mismatching (false positives as my scientist friend called them) to illustrate a kind of how-to by poor example.

Once these photographs are studied one comes to realize even poorly chosen examples can exemplify what this art is—an invitation to play.

I apologize for the lack of hands presenting these works, but as I was working alone on this set of trash mismatches I could not have someone photograph me officially presenting them.

Also of note is that I wouldn’t normally include organic matter as trash (unless it was something like a piece of lettuce from a hamburger) because I think matching man-made trash gets much closer to the vital practice of this art. However with mismatching, that proscription does not apply.

I urge anyone to take up this new art and discover the vital practice for himself. It is quite easy. Just pick up a carefully chosen piece of trash and walk around until you find another piece of trash that you feel matches the one you have so carefully chosen. Then arrange the first one in a similar manner to the second one and contemplate their similitude. I highly recommend that the practice of trash-matching be done in small groups so that one may present the final work with hands gesturing to the masterpiece, while another member records the work with a digital camera.

In this way new cathedrals may be built—cathedrals built by playing with trash.

The photos below may or may not have a right order, you may decide the solution to that problem.

Enjoy.

Michael Labenz