Pop-Up Repair is an intervention in the cycle of use-and-discard consumerism. For four weeks in June 2013, a group of theater artisans — including a Resource Exchange employee — will activate a storefront repair shop, fixing household objects brought in by members of the public. The pop-up shop is the experimental first step in a larger research project investigating our relationships with the objects we use every day: what they mean, what they’re worth, and why we repair and reuse instead of buying new.

Like The Resource Exchange, Pop-Up Repair will track the material it is keeping out of landfill by weighing it. The Resource Exchange contributed a reclaimed scale to these tracking efforts — once owned and operated by an individual artist, the scale is now getting a second chance in this art/sustainability endeavor!

In their first week of operations, the “repair wizards” accepted 120 items to be fixed, from crystal inkwells to chairs to printers to handbags. Final diversion numbers, along with stories about the repaired items and what motivated their owners to have them fixed, will be presented in a multimedia presentation developed at the close of the pop-up shop. Stay tuned for more information on the project by liking Pop-Up Repair’s facebook or visiting their website.