A church basement hosted the earliest junk-environment installations.

Evidence

Under the rubric “Ray Gun,” Oldenburg and Dine installed a pair of complementary environments. Dine’s was The House, where bedsprings dangled from the ceiling and the walls were adorned with tapestries made from his wife’s discarded clothes. The space was otherwise filled with egg crates and shiny objects that, retrieved from the street, Dine had painted pink and green. To reach his cozy-crazy nest one had to pass through Oldenburg’s less ingratiating The Street, where, rather than repurposed dresses, the walls were covered with sooty cardboard and strips of newspaper. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 122

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports ‘Grafting & Growth’: the reuse of waste materials as infrastructure/environment aligns with the trees-as-underused-worldbuilding frame, though from the built not botanical side.