A 8-m tall art work made of rejects by the Vietstar Group.
The Scrap Tower of Rejoice and Refuse is constructed by the Vietstar Group from the skeletal frames of two industrial screening machines—TerraSelect 7 and TerraSelect 9, German-engineered technologies that have operated continuously for more than fifteen years. During that time, they processed and sorted hundreds of thousands of tons of organic waste, transforming it into compost that nourishes agricultural production across Vietnam. Registered with Guinness Vietnam, this moment marks the largest environmental art action in Vietnam – when silence carries weight, and waste fills the sky.
The tower’s cylindrical body is wrapped in stainless steel mesh reclaimed from rotary screening drums once used for waste and compost separation. These perforated surfaces—designed to filter, sift, and separate—now allow light, air, and sky to pass through. What was once an instrument of control becomes a vessel of openness.
Standing upright in a public space, the tower marks the vertical accumulation of labor, time, and memories. Every layer carries the residue of an industrial past dedicated to regeneration over self-indulgence. It is a monument not to consumption, but to quiet endurance—to systems that worked relentlessly, out of sight, to return nutrients to the soil.
Now, the work reaches a turning point. A crowd of 2,000, wearing yellow, assembles around it, and then spreads out like a field of sunflowers. Having fulfilled its service to the earth, the tower is released, released from gravity, from duty, from enclosure. It is time to let the tower rise.
To let waste become form, form become symbol, and symbol dissolve into the sky.
What ascends is not mere metal, but a collective sigh. This is not a spectacle. It is a pause. A letting go.
