In a world where discarded toys often meet a fate of neglect and waste, Garbage Playtime! emerges as a creative endeavour with a mission. Jiat delves into the overlooked potential of abandoned toys, offering them a second chance at play and purpose. Through methods of deconstruction, reconstruction, and repair, Garbage Playtime breathes new life into forgotten treasures. As she embraces the spirit of sustainability and creativity, she invites audiences to reimagine the narrative surrounding toy consumption and environmental stewardship.

I'll start off by asking about your personal experience with toys. How did that turn into remixing these old toys?

My first experience with toys. Do you know Popmart? It started off with this one toy; I think it's called Pucky. I think I collected over a few hundred dollars worth of that because I bought like two or three whole boxes. Then I thought, actually making toys is quite fun. It got me spiralling, and I thought maybe I can learn to make toys myself. So I went online to search. I actually found this toy course that was four months long. After my specialist diploma, I took the four month course where I learned how to do all this.

Through that course, I learnt toy sculpting, clay sculpting, and resin printing. But what I noticed is that because it's plastic and it's 3d printed, there's a lot of waste. It got me thinking but I didn't really venture into all this yet. Eventually, I did this one project with my friends at the Singapore art book fest. Our idea was inspired by Frankenstein and we decided if we try cutting the toys and putting them back together it’ll be quite fun. So based on that, I thought that I could continue this effort since I already learnt toy design before coming to LASALLE.

You mentioned that your project looks at all these discarded toys. Are most of them from children?

Actually, I found them from Jalan Jalan Japan. I think most of them are from children because when I went there, the majority were children looking at the aisles.

During your project and making new toys out of these older toys, do you think there's a new value that comes from you reconstructing all this?

The way I try to make them, the way I try to give them a new life is to make them look very different from how they originally are. I think with this reconstruction it gives a sense of absurdness, and I hope it captures other people's attention. There was someone who commented that my toy assemblages reminded him of Toy Story, Sid. I hope it gives them that kind of feel.

With all this waste that's produced from the toy market how do you think people should treat toys? Do you think they should try making their own Frankensteins?

Oh yeah, most definitely. I’m actually working on some kind of an instructional manual on how to deconstruct toys if people want to. It’s to inspire them to want to make their own toys.

I think the majority of the fun part is definitely putting and seeing them come together. The whole deconstruction process is something that is quite interesting if you think about it. There are hard toys, rubber, fabric; and there's a lot of different ways of putting them back via hot glue or e6000 or just screws. So the whole process itself is very eye opening, in the sense where you have to learn to work with the materials and you have to think about the composition when you put them back.