{"id":32916,"date":"2023-02-14T04:55:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T04:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=32916"},"modified":"2023-02-16T19:27:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T19:27:26","slug":"my-art-uses-plastic-recovered-from-beaches-around-the-world-to-understand-how-our-consumer-society-is-transforming-the-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/my-art-uses-plastic-recovered-from-beaches-around-the-world-to-understand-how-our-consumer-society-is-transforming-the-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the\u00a0ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pam Longobardi<\/a>, Georgia State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold and to mitigate their ability to harm. Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea \u2013 a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My work<\/a> collecting and photographing ocean plastic and turning it into art began with an epiphany in 2005, on a far-flung beach at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii. At the edge of a black lava beach pounded by surf, I encountered multitudes upon multitudes of plastic objects that the angry ocean was vomiting onto the rocky shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could see that somehow, impossibly, humans had permeated the ocean with plastic waste. Its alien presence was so enormous that it had reached this most isolated point of land in the immense Pacific Ocean. I felt I was witness to an unspeakable crime against nature, and needed to document it and bring back evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began cleaning the beach, hauling away weathered and misshapen plastic debris \u2013 known and unknown objects, hidden parts of a world of things I had never seen before, and enormous whalelike colored entanglements of nets and ropes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Three<\/a>
\u2018Bounty Pilfered\u2019 (center), \u2018Newer Laoco\u00f6n\u2019 (left) and \u2018Threnody\u2019 (right). All made of ocean plastic from the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, installed at the Baker Museum in Naples, Fla., 2022. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I returned to that site again and again, gathering material evidence to study its volume and how it had been deposited, trying to understand the immensity it represented. In 2006, I formed the Drifters Project<\/a>, a collaborative global entity to highlight these vagrant, translocational plastics and recruit others to investigate and mitigate ocean plastics\u2019 impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My new book, \u201cOcean Gleaning<\/a>,\u201d tracks 17 years of my art and research<\/a> around the world through the Drifters Project. It reveals specimens of striking artifacts harvested from the sea \u2013 objects that once were utilitarian, but have been changed by their oceanic voyages and come back as messages from the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Array<\/a>
\u2018Drifters Objects,\u2019 a tiny sample of the plastic artifacts Pam Longobardi has collected from beaches worldwide. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Living in a plastic age<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in what some now deem the age of plastic<\/a>. Though it\u2019s not the only modern material invention, plastic has had the most unforeseen consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father was a biochemist at the chemical company Union Carbide<\/a> when I was a child in New Jersey. He played golf with an actor who portrayed \u201cThe Man from Glad<\/a>,\u201d a Get Smart-styled agent who rescued flustered housewives in TV commercials from inferior brands of plastic wrap that snarled and tangled. My father brought home souvenir pins of Union Carbide\u2019s hexagonal logo, based on the carbon molecule, and figurine pencil holders of \u201cTERGIE<\/a>,\u201d the company\u2019s blobby turquoise mascot. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cr5m8b28eqA?wmode=transparent&start=0 On the 2013 Gyre Expedition, Pam Longobardi traveled with a team of scientists, artists and policymakers to investigate and remove tons of oceanic plastic washing out of great gyres, or currents, in the Pacific Ocean, and make art from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I see plastic as a zombie material that haunts the ocean. It is made from petroleum, the decayed and transformed life forms of the past. Drifting at sea, it \u201clives\u201d again as it gathers a biological slime of algae and protozoans, which become attachment sites for larger organisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When seabirds<\/a>, fish<\/a> and sea turtles<\/a> mistake this living encrustation for food and eat it, plastic and all, the chemical load lives on in their digestive tracts<\/a>. Their body tissues absorb chemicals from the plastic<\/a>, which remain undigested in their stomachs, often ultimately killing them<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two<\/a>
Plastic \u2018nurdles,\u2019 (left), tiny pellets that serve as raw materials for manufacturing plastic products, and herring roe, or eggs (right). These visually analogous forms exemplify how fish can mistake plastic for food. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The forensics of plastic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I see plastic objects as the cultural archaeology of our time \u2013 relics of global late-capitalist consumer society<\/a> that mirror our desires, wishes, hubris and ingenuity. They become transformed as they leave the quotidian world and collide with nature. By regurgitating them ashore or jamming them into sea caves, the ocean is communicating with us through materials of our own making. Some seem eerily familiar; others are totally alien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two<\/a>
A degraded plastic doll arm, from the series \u2018Evidence of Crimes.\u2019 Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A person engaging in ocean gleaning acts as a detective and a beacon, hunting for the forensics of this crime against the natural world and shining the light of interrogation on it. By searching for ocean plastic in a state of open receptiveness, a gleaner like me can find symbols of pop culture, religion, war, humor, irony and sorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
\u2018Division Line,\u2019 2016. This photograph shows the \u2018life-jacket cemetary\u2019 in Lesvos, Greece. Traumatized asylum-seekers and migrants arriving by boat from T\u00fcrkiye leave the life vests on shore as they stagger inland. Most of the waste is plastic. \u00a9 Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In keeping with the drifting journeys of these material artifacts, I prefer using them in a transitive form as installations. All of these works can be dismantled and reconfigured, although plastic materials are nearly impossible to recycle. I display some objects as specimens on steel pins, and wire others together to form large-scale sculptures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
From the series \u2018Prophetic Objects,\u2019 a plastic cap from a Greek manufacturer of cleaning products, found on the Greek island of Kefalonia. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am interested in ocean plastic in particular because of what it reveals about us as humans in a global culture, and about the ocean as a cultural space and a giant dynamic engine of life and change. Because ocean plastic visibly shows nature\u2019s attempts to reabsorb and regurgitate it, it has profound stories to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
\u2018Albatross\u2019 and \u2018Hope Floats,\u2019 2017. Recovered ocean plastic, survival rescue blankets, life vest straps and steel. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I believe humankind is at a crossroads with regards to the future. The ocean is asking us to pay attention. Paying attention is an act of giving, and in the case of plastic pollution, it is also an act of taking: Taking plastic out of your daily life. Taking plastic out of the environment. And taking, and spreading, the message that the ocean is laying out before our eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pam Longobardi<\/a>, Regents’ Professor of Art and Design, Georgia State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pam Longobardi, Georgia State University I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold and to mitigate their ability to harm. Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea \u2013 a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning. My work collecting and photographing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":32917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[2933,13516,13515,5587,954,957,2800,4970,6831,2934,757,13514],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32916"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32934,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32916\/revisions\/32934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}