The Winnipeg Trash Museum.
Three years ago, Winnipeg artist Frieso Boning became transfixed by the strange abandoned objects that revealed themselves as the snow melted in the streets. Riffing on the real-world campaign then underway for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in downtown Winnipeg, he started to imagine a parallel institution devoted entirely to garbage.
The 49-year-old started to research the unmentioned underside of urban history, looking at refuse collection from rag-and-bone men to industrial dumpsters. (Along the way, he discovered that the ubiquitous green garbage bag was co-invented by Winnipegger Harry Wasylyk.) He started dreaming up future exhibits for his fictional museum (Lost Gloves, Children of the Landfill) and backed them up with sketches, maquettes and deliberately earnest educational panels.
Proclaiming that the Winnipeg Trash Museum would "do double" what Frank Gehry's Guggenheim did for Bilbao, Boning's elaborate project was a gentle swipe at civic boosterism, archi-tourism and signature buildings. In fact, several of his proposed designs for the WTM could easily pass for the crumpled remains of Gehry's takeout lunch.
Last fall, Winnipeg gallery Ace Art Inc. invited Boning to put his faux-museum on display - an exhibition that followed the megaproject's progress from the fundraising stage through to a hard-fought mascot-naming competition to a glorious, garbage-filled future. As a shrewd comment on the bottom-line realities of museum programming, Boning also came up with ideas for WTM merch (with a gift shop selling garbage-themed totes and T-shirts) along with the Junkfud restaurant and the Get Trashed museum bar.
Cheesy, yes, but Boning's examination of museological practices and blockbuster architecture - as well as his hometown's chronic insecurities - uses satire, so understated that it practically folds in on itself. He pulls us in for a closer look at our wasteful culture while bringing out the poetics of garbage. Through Boning's imagined museum, there is a melancholy sense of mystery to be found in the afterlife of objects.
By Alison Gillmor
Alison Gillmor lives in Winnipeg, where she writes on film and popular culture. Since visiting the Winnipeg Trash Museum, she has become strangely self-conscious about the contents of her garbage.
