Beyond Denver: Turning Junk Mail into Art
Published November 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 10
by Alecia D. McKenzie
PARIS, France - Like everyone else, Barbara Hashimoto hated the junk mail coming in through the door. Until she decided one day that it could be transformed into art and lessons about the environment.
Hashimoto, a U.S.-born, Japanese-trained artist, has created “The Junk Mail Experiment,” in which huge quantities of unsolicited advertising mail are shredded into temporary installation art and eventually into sculptures. The “Experiment” is currently on view in Paris and in Chicago.
“I was working in a firm and was amazed at how much junk mail we received,” says Hashimoto, a slim dark-haired woman who speaks passionately about her work.
“When I read the incredible statistics, it inspired me as an artist to do something visual that could also teach people about what we’re doing to nature,” she told IPS, as she took a break from crafting the installations.
According to the environment group ForestEthics, some 100 billion pieces of junk mail are sent each year in the United States alone, accounting for a third of all the mail delivered globally. Nearly half of that amount is thrown out unopened or unread, adding to the trash heap, although some of it is recycled.
The group estimates that about 100 million trees are used annually in the production of junk mail in the U.S. The toll on the environment includes emission of greenhouse gases in manufacture of the mail.
The advantage for business is that direct-mail advertising generates about $646 billion a year in sales in the United States.
Hashimoto, 54, said she began the Junk Mail Experiment in 2006. She asked the staff at the Chicago architecture firm BauerLatoza Studio, where she was artist-in-residence, to set aside all advertising mail they received. Within a year, she had collected some 3,000 cubic feet of shredded documents.
“I personally shredded everything and it took like forever,” she recalls with a laugh.
She first used the mail as part of a performance work titled “Shredded Junk Mail with Grand Piano.” In this, Chicago architect and musician Edward Torrez played one of his compositions while Hashimoto threw pieces of paper over him and the instrument. By the end of the performance, both piano and pianist were “buried”—showing how junk can stifle creativity and art, to paraphrase one critic.
Hashimoto, who studied business at Yale and ceramic art in Japan, has also shredded and framed pages from catalogues, using the strips of paper to form intricate designs. These resemble some of her early ceramic pieces for which she initially became known as an artist.
In addition, she has dyed and painted pieces of plastic, sent by credit card solicitation companies, and turned them into artworks with titles such as “This is Not An Actual Credit Card.” In the U.S., millions of credit card solicitations are mailed each month, and most of this plastic ends up in landfills, according to environmental groups.
In France, the organization Les Amis de la Terre - Paris (Friends of the Earth) is working with Hashimoto to get the message out about the global impact of junk mail. They provided volunteers to help shred the mountain of mail that some 100 local schoolchildren collected for the project.
“We proposed the idea of collaborating because we also have this problem in France where each household receives around 40 kilos of junk mail a year,” Emeline Eudes,spokes-person for the group’s forest department told IPS.
“We wanted to show the public, including children, that they also have the responsibility to say ‘stop’ to senders of junk mail and to do something for the environment,” she added.
Courtesy of Inter Press Service
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