dym's enrichment

At Dymproducts we abide by a rule: to make installations and objects out of what we already have. We don’t shop for supplies,¹ we don’t throw anything away.² We use household and studio garbage, or what we or our family have worn out, or materials bought long ago for another purpose. We don’t go hunting for materials, although might use what we stumble across along the way somewhere and / or what an acquaintance offers us.³

We make objects that strive for functionality: shelves, containers and organizers, clothing, bags, tables. In the role of product prototyper, we may actually end up with a real product,⁴ something we, or our friends, or our clients put to use.

Usually, however, we take acts of making far beyond what is necessary—pushing objects as a painter might push a painting. In this way, we create beautiful and complex things,⁵ highlighting the very process of making objects, with all variety of meanings implicit in acts of fabrication.⁶

We also make works with the explicit, useful intention of exhausting our supply of especially meagre scraps or waste materials,⁷ by embellishing them to the point of transformation. Apparent waste thus has more than a chance at redemption.

The work we do here is not about the necessity of recycling. However, our project is centrally, lovingly, occupied with garbage, the importance of garbage, rich as it is in information and material. Since everything we make derives from something that we've used or cut or broken or lived with (or come across by chance: another person’s trash that becomes, for us, a marker of our movements through space and time) our objects and products are repositories of information about us.⁸ We make some effort, however, to transform waste materials into "new" raw materials, so the narratives implicit in old, used and broken things is simply not visible in our products.

------------------------------------------------— Miriam Dym

1 There are exceptions in two categories: binding materials (especially thread, occasional glue, and a little hardware) and marking materials (thread, pencils and, decreasingly, paint).
2 We do send the really stinky stuff to landfill, because, other than via documentation we haven’t figured out a way to deal with it—strategies like Piero Manzoni’s canned shit or Wall-E's blocks don’t work for us—but we recycle and compost what we can.
3 It turns out that there is no shortage of people who love us to take what they’re getting rid of. While this is a great way to acquire otherwise elusive materials, it is an obstacle to one big goal: using up the garbage we're producing and what we've already stocked.
4 In fact, we are working, slowly, on making everything we own and use. Since this is only a part-time project, we live with commercial products, too.
5 Our work is often embellished. The decoration derives from functionality done to extremes—for example, sewing over and over and over. We use too much thread, do too much tying, pour too much glue, we use way too many nails. While exagerations are at times structurally necessary, it is just this excess that becomes decoration.
6 It is impractical—expensive and time consuming—to make for oneself what one needs. But making something is a way of experiencing and marking the passage of time, exploring relationships with the (physical) world, with objects we live with or discard or can’t have. Using leftovers is a way of writing stories. It is also a way of commenting on life in a consumer society—even a collapsing one.
7 We save and stock all the tiniest bits of garbage: pencil shavings, laundry lint, thread cuttings, masses and piles and all odd scraps of plastic junk. While figuring out ways to process and use these materials, we sort, classify and store them. This latter process is central to the larger project, and we make it visible by storing as much as possible in our working / installation spaces. We do this partly to have visual reminders of stocked materials.
8 In Your Enrichment we are developing two projects to include others’ waste and overstock, life and travels.
In Alterations and Repairs we repair or alter things that need fixing or are not being used. Our interventions—usually but not always to practical ends, intentionally visible often to the point of absurdity—render the failing object useful again or turn it into something else entirely. Alterations and Repairs includes a bartering system where we at D's E trade repairs and alterations for waste, overstock, or services.
In the second project, provisionally entitled “Visit,” we extend ourselves to clients’ homes or work spaces, and use their waste and overstock materials to make products specifically for them, with the stict condition the client use these products only as art. We will provide this service both on- and off-site for a range of time-periods (single day to multiple weeks) and quantity of materials’ used. Clients will be encouraged to make their enriched space(s) and / or objects available for public viewing.