Artist Sells $25 Trash Souvenirs Found Outside Taylor Swift's Wedding
“It wasn't as dirty as I was expecting,” said Justin Gignac, who suited up to collect garbage with a claw grabber outside Madison Square Garden.
Following Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding at Madison Square Garden last week, one entrepreneur had the foresight to create and market souvenirs before the singer inevitably reveals her next scheme to capitalize on the widely publicized event. Confirming that people will buy anything, New York City artist Justin Gignac has already sold out of an edition of his pocket-sized vitrine boxes filled with street trash found outside of the T&T wedding.
“It wasn't as dirty as I was expecting,” Gignac said in a phone call with Hyperallergic, describing the experience of suiting up to collect trash with a claw grabber outside of MSG on July 3.
“I found a lot of bottle caps, cigarette butts, and one left AirPod on the crosswalk — that was a first, even though those are probably the easiest things to lose,” he added.
Imbued with the wedding's chaotic energy and the hopes and dreams of the Swiftieverse, these bits of day-to-day detritus were stuffed into 50 transparent little boxes marked with the momentous date and sold online for $25 a piece. Labeled “NYC Pocket Garbage,” the wedding drop is one of several lines from Gignac's New York City Garbage (2001–ongoing) project, which is exactly what it sounds like.
The artist told Hyperallergic that the venture began during a college internship as an effort to dispute a coworker's claim that packaging design doesn't matter.
“ If I could package something nobody would ever want to buy and convince people to buy it, then I knew I could prove them wrong,” he explained.
He recounted making 10 cubes and hawking them from a cardboard box spray-painted with 'Garbage for sale' in Times Square, where he sold his first one for five dollars.
Maintaining the bit that NYC's trash is better than that of anywhere else, these scrappy souvenirs went from a joke to a collectible to an artwork as Gignac increased the price. “It totally changes people's perception of its value,” he elaborated, adding that the art is in the sale rather than in the cube.
Gignac has sold over 1,700 cubes to born-and-raised New Yorkers, tourists, and people abroad who want to experience the Big Apple but can't yet make their way over.
He told Hyperallergic that dating and numbering the cubes also adds to their collectability by turning them into little time capsules that are a “snapshot of what's going on culturally.”
On that note, Gignac avoids organic material for longevity reasons (and because he has a sensitive gag reflex ... Don't worry, the nickname "Gagnac" was indeed assigned). He also created editions around historically significant events, including Barack Obama's first presidential inauguration, the day gay marriage was legalized in NYC, and the 2009 World Series, before pausing the project for about a decade to start his own company. Nevertheless, he went back to collecting and cubing on the 25th anniversary of the first edition he hawked at Times Square, and recently released an Earth Day series sourced from bodega refuse.
Gignac took up the T&T wedding because of the ambiguity and speculation leading up to it, the fan fervor, and the cultural polarization it brought on with Swift's billionaire status and the disruption to public transit.
Although he didn't come across any beaded friendship bracelets, which are staples in the Swiftie fandom, he did find an ovulation test kit, which he said was “maybe manifesting something for the couple.” The cube containing the test strip is already spoken for, but Gignac said he might make some more.
Gignac's project evidently engages with the criticism of overconsumption and waste management through an environmentalist lens. But, as the artist recounted to Hyperallergic, the takeaway message for many others is that if you can sell people garbage, then it shouldn't be a problem to sell them stuff they actually need.
