Waste Not

When I saw this show, "Waste Not," by Song Dong at the Museum of Modern Art in early September, I was overwhelmed by the obvious love that went into its creation: the love of a son who wanted to help his mother, whose dilapidated home was going to be bulldozed by the Chinese government; the love of the two together to sort and save the objects; the love of the volunteers around the world who carefully laid out each plastic bottle and old toothpaste tube as an object to be as worthy of contemplation and regard as any priceless work of art. The rows of tattered shoes, the tower of brown-gray soap dried in the sun and saved from the 1960s, the pieces of Styrofoam from electronic equipment, the bundles of chopsticks and old crayons, the paper shopping bags--it was seemingly endless. This was a woman's life, as well as her security against another period of want, and, perhaps most movingly, her physical scrapbook of a family's life.

The exhibition, which has been shown in Asia and Europe, was received well. Song Dong's mother, Zhao Ziangyuan, was happy to be a part of the show, taking visitors on tours through the space, explaining different objects. But she died in early 2009, after finally relocating to an apartment complex. Always a lover of living creatures, she saw a wounded bird in a tree and climbed up in a step ladder to free it--and then fell. In the New York Times review of the show, critic Holland Cotter intimated that perhaps, released of her worldly possessions and of her past, Zhao Ziangyuan was able to release herself as well.

The whole experience of making my way through the show was like a walking meditation, a kind of waking remembrance of my own family's habits and valuation of objects. The everyday item--the stub of a pencil, the chopstick without a mate--somehow is a potent symbol of potential and salvation. Lost in a flood? That chopstick could be the crucial item in lashing together a raft to safety. A flint of soap, a length of satin ribbon, a plastic lidded container once filled with yogurt--these were things you had for free that could save your life on a really bad day. Car break down? Roof leaking? Pipe burst? Toaster oven explode? You could have in your possession already the very thing that could put everything all right again.

There are special words for this kind of activity now. "Re-purposing" is probably my favorite. It may just be a nice way of saying that is one is choosing to re-use old crap. In our sudden awareness of our environment and the dim effects of climate change, it's suddenly trendy to practice this type of thrift, embraced with the thrill of extreme sports. But the reverence with which Song Dong chose to honor his mother's lifelong personal practice of conservation--a survivalist's response to deprivation--is more poignant and resonant.