Every Thursday morning, the retailers of Eindhoven put their empty cardboard boxes on the street outside their shops. I hitched a ride on the garbage truck and discovered that these boxes are compressed into bales, shipped to China as one of Holland’s biggest export products, and that they find their way back to the shopping street as new packaging for exported products. I enriched this endless paper stream with stories about the history of Eindhoven’s main shopping street. The cardboard forms the backbone of the shopping street (without recycling cardboard, no new boxes; without new boxes, no new products in the shops), while the street forms the historic backbone of Eindhoven. From the boxes that I largely found in two shopping streets, I made cardboard scenario models that portray moments from the more recent and very old history of the street. Then one Thursday morning I returned the stories to their place in the street, in front of the shops. For about three hours the scenes became part of the street again, but then the garbage truck arrived to pick up the stories together with the cardboard. Ready for the big recycling trip around the world, to come back as packaging for all our beloved new products.
The story of the global cardboard cycle and the local stories of Eindhoven that joined the cycle are shown in a circular final installation of white paper scenario models on thin metal tripods, slideshow of the street installations, a soundscape, and me as a storyteller.
With this project I try to show the layers of a city, how a street can unrecognizably change in time, how the meaning of stories can change in no time, but how everything is still connected in some way. I try to trigger people to look with different eyes to the world around them, and maybe understand a little bit better the growing network of stories we’re part of. I think it can make the world more beautiful and exciting in our minds.
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