The more time you spend in New York, festering among the putrid-smelling trash bags and anticipating the next great local story about a rat interacting with food, the more you come to accept the stink and the grime, invite it into your soul, and hold tight to your inner trash panda, a guiding light of consciousness through our urine-filled streets. Of course, not everyone embraces NYC’s dirtiness, its inherent garbage-vibe; not everyone has an inner trash panda. If you are one of the lucky ones, born ready to shed this country’s deeply ingrained Puritan values and eat that totally fine funnel cake from the top of the Coney Island trash can, then City Reliquary needs your ideas for its new exhibit.
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The exhibit, “NYC Trash! Past, Present, & Future” will open this October and run through next April at the City Reliquary’s Williamsburg space on 370 Metropolitan Ave. The show will, “explore the diverse ways that New Yorkers relate to and deal with their trash,” from the days of 19th-century squalor to modern waste management plans (like banning food on the subway). The call for submissions specifically names waste management experts, Department of Sanitation ephemera collectors and recycling enthusiasts, but “anyone invested in the past, present, or future of trash” in this great, gross city are invited to submit ideas.
The submission deadline is Monday, August 14. To submit, send your name, phone number and a description of your exhibition with size & space requirements to info[at]cityreliquary[dot]org.