About Recycling and freganism in Europe?

This is the reply I sent to Somebody who wrote asking about recycled art, dumpster diving, and professional trash picking for recyclable materials as creative ways of reinventing our trash in Europe.

Well, I could say I am one of those who could call herself a freegan, but I didn't really use that label. I guess what you meant is somebody who tries to live on freebies and leftovers as much as possible?

Here in my community in Berlin we pick leftover food from markets as well as we buy stuff. I make art with usually recycled materials but I don't necessarily try to point it out when I create something. It comes from my natural way of being, I've been called a scavenger and I admit scavenging after a flea market is very fun to do.

I know one place in Berlin where they receive and store all kinds of materials from companies or individuals that no longer need them and give them away for people who need them on donation basis. They also have a gallery where some artists show art made with reused materials, but they don't only focalize in recycled art but in just the storage of reusing materials. Also they give workshops for schools and groups of interested people. http://www.kunst-stoffe-berlin.de/

I'm from Barcelona, and there is an interesting association there called Drap-Art. (Drap in Catalan language means a kind of cloth used for cleaning and it used to be leftover fabric from something else). They have a store (as far as I know) and they have a special show in mid December every year where they feature art made with recycled materials (those are usually very smartly constructed things) and also a marketplace where individuals and handicraft people can sell their products made with recycled materials. For that you have to pay a lot and sometime it's doubtful the amount of material they actually really reuse, because it is hard to produce many things that look the same out of fabric or materials you randomly found. It is nice to see. http://www.drapart.org/?lang=gb

I'm pretty in the word recycle you could obviously include any kind of building built specially for one purpose, abandoned and then squatted or bought and used for something else. There is a cool arty place in Paris called Les Frigos that used to be a building sized meat storage or something similar and it was taken over by some artists to use the fridges as ateliers, and after some problems with the 'bad kind of squats' the french government bought the building and gave it to the artists :) http://les-frigos.com/

I'm sure I could think of more, I like your project, I could say my life itself is your project and I have been tracking these places and these atitudes for years now :) I just realized this so Im gonna reuse this for my blog!

I hope you find lots and let's be in touch!

Tau



Photo 1 : Laura and me at Les frigos a Paris

Photo 2: Les Frigos a Paris