DYM Products & Opportunities

Here at Dym products & we are attempting to use up what we already have. Founder Miriam Dym sets up strict systems such that we throw (almost) nothing away¹ and buy (almost) no materials.² We won't seek out out-of-stock materials, although we might take something we stumble across or accept, with reluctance, a donation.³ We make functional objects in series -- including dishsponges, underwear, shorts, tables, and notes -- then struggle with definitions of art versus product.

Dym products & emphasizes processes of object making, stressing a wide range of implied meanings in acts of fabrication.⁴ We avail ourselves of any means, including but not limited to sewing, shredding, grinding, pulping, singing, drilling, folding, cutting, binding, agglomerating, in order to render old materials into useable ones for our products and art.

We make our products with the explicit, useful intention of exhausting our supply of especially meagre scraps or waste materials,⁵ we embellish or alter them to the point of transformation. Apparent waste thus has more than a chance at redemption.

Dym products & also provides transformative and installation services to select clients who require them. Please get in touch if you'd like more information.

1 The main exceptions fall into two categories: binding materials (especially thread, some glue, and hardware) and marking materials (thread, toxic paints and, decreasingly, pencils).

2 We do send the really stinky stuff to landfill, because we already have enough to deal with. 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 happens that people love us to take what they’d like to get rid of. This is a great way to acquire otherwise elusive materials, yet it can be an obstacle to one big goal: using up our garbage.

4 It is impractical—expensive and time consuming—to make for oneself what one needs. We do it to experience and mark the passage of time. Using leftovers is a way of writing stories, and of commenting on life in a consumer society.

5 We save all the tiniest bits of garbage: pencil shavings, laundry lint, thread cuttings, all odd scraps of plastic junk. While figuring out ways to process and use these materials, we sort, classify and store them. To expose these latter processes, we store as much as possible in our work and installation spaces.