Black River
Junky Old Stuff
Pictured above, EMPTY TUBE OF TOOTHPASTE trending on eBay’s homepage
About The Project
The following images serve as a reference for how the public would have seen the project on eBay.
The first image (pdf) is a closeup snapshot that shows the project was at the top of eBay’s featured items list. In the second image, the snapshot shows more of the eBay page from when the project was trending.
In 2003, Neal Livingston produced a New Media project Junky Old Stuff, a set of ten prints that were ads on eBay and were designed as satires of online shopping. The project garnered national newspaper and radio attention.
National Media Attention
- Saturday Globe and Mail Arts review section, mentioned on front page of this section as well
- CBC National Arts Report lead item before 8am CBC radio news, and on again before 6pm news on arts report
- Halifax Daily News ran an article.
- Profiled in Pottersfield Portfolio
- Selected pieces shown in group show at Inverness County Centre for the Arts
The Background
Looking around on eBay in the 2010s, the idea came to Livingston of doing this new media project. Projects he worked on previously were mostly issue related and personal. Junky Old Stuff seemed to fit both these references, and be the right idea to have on eBay.
Neal had been interested in doing an internet-based art project for about 5 years. Junky Old Stuff fit his criteria for an internet Art project because it works on several levels.
The Idea
The idea was to make a piece about consumerism as a way of life, and have it be funny too. In Junky Old Stuff, the code language of advertising and consumerism play a prominent role to raise the issue of ad-speak and its influences on our culture and thinking.
Using eBay as the platform for this project is a metaphor for fitting into the globalized corporate world. Conforming to eBay’s website rules is like a paradigm for how individuals do or do not fit well into this new world order.
Neal Livingston likes the idea of selling the ad rather than the object. While Junky Old Stuff is publicly available to see on the internet, he wanted to have signed fine art prints of the ads that people could buy.
On the traditional level of art making, Neal wanted the prints to be beautiful. To do this, the photographs had to be attractive and high quality, and the written part of the Ads had to be like individual, well-crafted short stories. The result is that the set of ten ads / prints are successful both together and individually.
The 10 Junky Old Stuff Art Pieces
Find all ten items from the Junky Old Stuff project and how they were advertised on eBay below. The art pieces in this collection are titled:
- DIRTY OLD COAT
- CRUMMY PANTS
- DIRTY TOOTHBRUSH
- DISGUSTING OFFICE SHIRT
- EMPTY TUBE OF TOOTHPASTE
- FALLING APART SNOW PANTS
- GRUNGY HIKING BOOTS
- JUNKY TRUCK
- WORN OUT HAIRBRUSH
- WRECKED HOUSE
Click on each of the ten art pieces above to read about each item.
Technical Issues
Being Neal’s first internet project the technical issues just kept coming up again and again, and at many points seemed never ending. What he thought would take two weeks to execute instead took nearly eight.
In researching how to have Junky Old Stuff work on eBay, their information was often not completely clear. Customer support was always helpful, though at one point, when Livingston was getting frustrated, he wished they could also bend the rules a bit.
Neal is indebted to all of those who assisted him with Junky Old Stuff. Without their help, he would not have been able to carry out this project on eBay in the manner in which he wanted to have it available. Their names appear in the credits below.
Livingston is very pleased to be able to present this project and hopes that you enjoy it. Please tell your family, friends, and colleagues where they can view it.
Post-Project Note
After The Globe and Mail article and somewhere beyond 30,000 hits in 10 days, the project came to eBay’s notice, and they disallowed the project – taking it off-line as Neal was not selling the items in his ads, only the ads themselves!
Credits
Produced, directed, written, photographed, and conceived by Neal Livingston
Production Assistant: Peggy Cameron
Technical Mentoring: Chris Majka
Online Ad Layouts: Candice Green
Legal: Rob Aske, Stewart Mckelvey Stirling Scales