Pallet Collar Chronicles Volume 4

Pallet Collar Chronicles, Volumes 1–4

An artistic craft project by Akay & Olabo. *Pallet Collar Chronicles* marks the culmination of a project by artists Akay and Olabo, centering on reuse, creativity, and the overlooked materials of everyday life.

Millions of pallet collars are manufactured for the transport industry every year. Once no longer needed, they are often left folded up outside buildings, warehouses, and loading docks. Nearly a hundred discarded pallet collars were collected and given new life in Toxoplasma’s workshop, where the wood was transformed into a series of artistic projects.

But the story didn’t quite end when the wood was used up. Left behind was a box containing the metal fittings from the original pallet collars. Akay wanted to get rid of them, while Olabo saw potential in the leftovers. Perhaps they would come in handy one day. That day arrived in the form of books.

Pallet Collar Chronicles Volume 4
After the spiral staircase was completed, some small parts and scraps remained in the workshop. These were quickly put to use in the construction of a cabinet (100 x 60 x 30 cm) designed to store large quantities of candy previously rescued from dumpsters. The cabinet is placed at various locations around Stockholm, providing city dwellers with a craving for sweets with as much candy as they could wish for—at the very low price of 3 kronor per piece (a sum that goes directly to the unpaid entrepreneur who sourced the goods and stocked the shelves). And most importantly: there were no longer any wooden planks lying around cluttering up Toxoplasma’s workshop. That marked the end of the saga of the pallet collars...

Well, not quite. Sure, all the wood was now (finally) gone, but there was still a box full of bulky metal hinges left over from the original pallet collars. Akay gave up and tossed the box into the nearest dumpster. Olabo went to that same dumpster and fished them out again. He insisted they might come in handy for something, sometime in the future. They could, for instance, be used to make giant plywood books about the arduous process of getting rid of pallet collars...