Both devoted garage-salers and lovers of all things thrift,
the apartment I share with my boyfriend is an orange-walled hybrid of past and
present, old and new. A dusty record player sits in the forty-two inch shadow
of our flat screen TV, which faces a tattered yellow chair we rescued from a
rummage sale two years ago. A missing leg meant that it was free, and after
several failed attempts to fix the thing we used a few blocks of wood to prop
up the back end, concealing our work with a bookcase purchased on Craigslist
for two dollars.
Saturday afternoons, my boyfriend and a friend of his from
art school sit on our couch (bought new last summer after we grew weary of
Goodwill’s stained, lumpy offerings) and watch VHS tapes they find at thrift
stores and auctions. Interested in obsolete technology, Josh and Derek create
videos and other conceptual-based art projects that celebrate the collision of
new media with old. Josh drags black garbage bags full of tapes from the office
we share, and I watch while he and Derek sort through them and decide which
ones to sample for their own videos. In one, Chuckie Cheese and his friends try
to hotwire a school bus; in another, a high school choir from Ohio goes on a
field trip to New York City. The
group favorite, though, is a video of a teenage couple that takes a ride on
what looks like a giant slingshot at a county fair, their screams
decade-shattering as they are snapped once, twice, into the night.
Watch below:
Amy Bernhard is a Defunct staff reader and contributor to Ye Olde Blogge.
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