Community Post from the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse
Party with a Purpose
[eats, drinks and good conversation]
“The Fine Art of Creative Reuse”
We all know the three “R’s”—reduce, reduce, recycle. But recently, it seems the possibilities have expanded to include new creative activities. Artists and artisans as well as enthusiastic crafters are exploring the possibilities of vintage, DIY, upcycling, recovered materials, and more. These “new media” include discarded bike chains, vinyl records, wine barrels, seatbelts and virtually every other used material. And increasingly, such practices are affirmed as ethical and necessary, as our planet is ravaged by increased production, endless consumption and truly monumental waste.
Inspired by the activities at the Pittsburgh Center for Creative reuse, we invite artists of all backgrounds and practices to join us in rethinking creative reuse.
People we want to meet:
- artists or artisans working with trash, scraps, found objects, vintage stuff, discarded, recovered, recycled or upcycled materials,
- practitioners of appropriation art;
- artists working in any medium dealing with themes of consumption, trash, recycling, landfills, the ecology more generally, etc.;
- eco-activists working on the border between aesthetics and politics;
Questions to explore:
- do artists engage in “creative reuse” for aesthetic or political reasons—or both?
- can reusing old objects be a source of creative freedom, or are old objects always weighed down by the histories and contexts they bring with them?
- in a society where consumption is equivalent to social engagement, does reuse become a radical act of counter-cultural refusal?
- where is the line between “use” and “resuse”?
- is reuse a form of originality and creativity or repetition and appropriation?
Interested? Join us for eats, drinks and good conversation!
Saturday, March 23
Alex’s Place, 5615 Melvin Street, at Wightman, Sq. Hill 15217
RSVP by March 18 to alexandra.oliver@gmail.com or 412 512 3860
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