plastic in paradisum

plastic in paradisum is a creative interrogation of the social processes that confer value on the objects that surround us. The project is a digital, interactive archive of plastic objects I found washed up on the beach at Dead Horse Bay.

the concept

1. defamiliarize

2. make hyper-visible

3. re-examine

I have long thought that if we respect plastic’s history as a petroleum substance formed across the vastness of geologic time and its future as a material bound to outlive us and most if not all conceivable future generations, then we might treat it with the greatest respect instead of as mere junk.

Bonnie McDonald, Sacred Waste: Performance Pedagogy, Plastic Shamanism, and Ten Thousand Pieces of Trash

We are the garbage, the waste, we make it and dump it, to be separated from it is a cancer causing delusion…we cannot separate ourselves, clean and perfect, from the trash we dump out back into the can. Clean is a vision of internal trash, not a mere separation.

Gerald Vizenor, “Landfill Meditation”

the process

manufacturer

manufacturer

origin

manufacturer

origin

date created

manufacturer

origin

date created

history

manufacturer

origin

date created

history

cultural relevance

the outcome

the website: http://cargocollective.com/plastic-in-paradisum

the 3D gallery: https://sketchfab.com/baricks/collections/plastic-in-paradisum

email me: baricks@gmail.com

Further reading:

Jane Bennet, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

Max Liboiron, https://discardstudies.com/

Bonnie McDonald, Sacred Waste: Performance Pedagogy, Plastic Shamanism, and Ten Thousand Pieces of Trash

Susan Signe Morrison, The Literature of Waste: Material Ecopoetics and Ethical Matter

the feedback