Landfill Harmonic | documentary film | 25 mins | by Brad Allgood + Graham Townsley | 2015

Landfill Harmonic, focuses on one remarkable group in Paraguay: an orchestra that plays instruments created out of literal trash, made lovingly for them by their community.

The young musicians all come from Cateura, a slum that's built upon a landfill; the 2500 families who live there survive by separating garbage for recycling. A 2010 UNICEF report about this slum notes that more than 1500 tons of solid waste arrives each day. Illiteracy is rampant there, and Cateura's youngest inhabitants are often the ones responsible for collecting and reselling the garbage. The water supply is very dangerously polluted; on rainy days, the town floods with contaminated water. "A violin is worth more than a house here," says Favio Chavez, the orchestra's director and founder.

Ken Butler is a Brooklyn-based artist and musician who has built over 400 musical instruments. But these aren't just any custom-built instruments. Butler builds his pieces from discarded items he finds on the streets of New York City. Hockey sticks, tennis rackets, brooms, golf clubs, pieces of furniture, styrofoam, toothbrushes: all are fair game for his masterpieces. It's musique concrète... jungle.

LEARN MORE: https://kenbutler.squarespace.com/

LEARN MORE: https://www.lookmumnocomputer.com/projects#/lightsaber-theremin

 Scrap wood, rusty nails, old busted tv, radio from outside in the rain. "Foxhole" Modular Synth.