Binners' Dinners

In 2004 I started a series of pictures about consumerism. I wanted to make a piece about the alley culture in Vancouver, about the people who forage for recyclables in dumpsters. This led me to meet Tex, who has lived 20 years on the streets. He agreed to help me with the picture seen on the right.

The piece is a collaboration. Tex shares the copyright with me. He gave a copy to a firend, who then entered it on Tex's behalf in Habitat for Humanity's photo competition. We won. But although this was a happy event, I had misgivings about the media coverage and the ramifications of the project.

I felt that despite its surface appearance of success, in the end my "intervention" was going to do little more than preserve the status quo of poverty, by allowing art buyers (and me, the artist) to shirk responsibility for true change in society by concentrating on the artistic commodity. This brought up serious questions about the ethics of relational aesthetics.

Download the essay I wrote about it.

 

 

 

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