Packaging Garbage

I find it incredible what people consider art. NPR recently did a story on Justin Gignac, a young New Yorker who is making a fortune selling garbage. He first got the idea when, at an MTV internship, someone proposed the idea that package design has no impact on consumer perceptions. To prove him wrong, Gignac went out and started boxing up good ol’ New York trash and selling it for $10. People would buy them as gag gifts or souvenirs of their visit to NYC. Over time sales improved, so he raised the price for the boxes. Now, these boxes of garbage are going for $50-100. The fascinating outcome of this price hike is that now the boxes are being sold to people who consider them art not just a fun nick-nack.

Gignac is amused with this outcome, as am I. Over Christmas break, I was at my grandmother’s house in Washington, DC. In the room I was staying in is a fascinating collection of National Geographic Magazine dating from the ‘80s. I was thumbing through one and I came across a picture of an art display at the Guggenheim where the ‘artist’ had carved animal fat into giant simple shapes. The artist said, “the point of modern art is to show that the artist need not be constrained by what is accepted as art in its classic sense.” But, come on. People will buy (into) anything if it is properly packaged.

To read the transcript of NPR’s broadcast on the garbage boxes, check out http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89237219.