documenta 14, Athens School of Fine Arts Gallery, 8 April - 16 July 2017
The installation, 'Plastikus Progressus’ takes the form of a futuristic museum display, featuring the history of the development of the solution to the plastics pollution of the trans-ecology of water. This futuristic narrative goes back in time from 2054, to 2017, to 1907.
In 1907, bakelite, the first synthetic plastic was invented and pristine natural environments were common place.
2017 is represented as a key moment when plastic pollution was recognised as a major environmental disaster. Photographs document how plastic was transported into the oceans off the streets of cities.
By 2054, genetically engineered creatures consume the plastic rubbish polluting the trans ecology of water, cleaning up our mess. These creatures are assembled in a diorama surrounded by photographs and works on paper accompanied by a touch screen.
This narrative is embellished with scientific information about plastics pollution, the formation of gyres of concentrated rubbish, three cities’ rivers as case studies showing how our casuallittering is carried from the streets & parks into the sea - Sydney’s Cooks River, Athen’s Kifossis, Ilissos and Eridanos Rivers and the Fulda River in Kassel, Germany (Athens and Kassel are both hosting the international event, Documenta14 in 2017).
Taxonomies of all the genetically engineered plastic eating creatures may be viewed on the touch screen and the diorama’slabels. The taxonomiesare based on the characteristics of creatures they ‘evolved’ from, bringing people’s attention to Earth's extraordinary life forms. The creatures are constructed from discarded vacuum cleaners and rubbish off the streets of Sydney. Some are funny, some poignant, some fantastic, many have a political sub-text, for example DJ Trumpussy.
The works on paper: history charts from 2000BC to 2054AD, illustrated with imagery, lists the expansion & contraction of nations’ dominance, punctuated by criticalinventions that changed Homo sapiens’ technological capacities, cultures, economies, etc.
TOUCH SCREEN TEXT:
2054 PLASTIKUSPROGRESSUS : THE PROGRESS OF PLASTICS
Today, the 26th of September 2054, we celebrate the 2450th anniversary of the birth of Lao Tze, author of the international bestseller the Tao Te Ching.
In 2016, Lao Tzu inspired the use of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) to genetically modify the “plastic-munching microbe,” Ideonella sakaiensis, improving its genetic encoding and isolating the enzymes responsible for dissolving polyethylene terephthalate, or PET.
Since then, scientists have created a diversity of creatures that digest plastics to lead our attack on plastic’s toxic pollution of water’s trans-ecology. We now depend upon these creatures in 2054 to clean up our mess in the oceans, rivers, cities and our homes:
2017 FRACTALS, LITTER & CRISPR
Lao Tzu’s conception of the numinous unity of nature and Homo sapien’s place in it is expressed scientifically in the matrix of patterns called fractals - the underlying structure of natural forms:
In the early C21st, massive amounts of plastic litter in the trans-ecology of life-giving water was an environmental disaster. Plastic’s chemical structure was antithetical to the laws of nature, having no relationship to the organic structures expressed in fractals.
Plastic killed the life forms that ingested it whole. Plastic slowly disintegrated into indestructible, toxic, micro-fibres, poisoning our food chains.
Scientists have since solved this problem. They have genetically engineered creatures whose digestive systems dissolve plastics into harmless chemicals. Classified as the genus, Plastikus progressus, we give thanks to Science and theTao Te Ching, Lao Tzu’s ancient masterpiece, which inspired this brilliant solution to a seemingly impossible problem:
1907 MEMENTO MORI - PRISTINE NATURE
In 1907, when nature was relatively ‘pristine’, the first synthetic plastic, known as bakelite, was invented. This was the genesis of the scientific miracle that has delivered to us the species, Plastikus progressus - an army of environmental sanitation workers, diligently cleaning up our pollution.
In 2017 an archive was established, recording nature in its pristine condition in three sites – the Hills of Athens, the Sababurg Forest near Kassel, and Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, Sydney. For us in 2054 it is a momento mori of a past era’s belief in the importance of environmental heterogeneity: