Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

The "Art-Earth"

Our garbage is the largest collaborative art project of humankind.  Garbage is pure representation, it accumulates to create a picture of humankind which is toxically embedded in the earth.  Much of our garbage is plastic and, as Heather Davis writes, “plastic does not go away. It does not biodegrade. That is, it does not turn into something else. So all the plastic that has ever been made, from take-out containers to nylons to IV bags, is rapidly composing a new kind of geologic layer on the earth” (68).  Plastics break down into small particles called microplastics.  In the form of microplastics our garbage transcends the human scale, it escapes the human audience that mediums like literature or visual arts require and physically infiltrates the environment and the beings that live there, including us.  As an art medium, plastic is successful, its impact is broad, reaching outside the gallery; plastic’s ability to change form also keeps it relevant, once it has exhausted its usefulness as a human object, it breaks apart and enters the environment finding a new audience.  The environment is the primary audience of plastic; plastic spends most of its long lifespan as a waste material, it exists as a useful human object for a very short period of its life and once thrown away continues to exist.

The proliferation of waste materials has become an inspiration for art, Ingeborg Reichle writes, “No longer part of the cycle of goods and utilization, these now useless and worthless objects have been first degraded to waste, then rehabilitated by art as an artistic material and upgraded as “worthy of art.” (30)  The collective art project of our waste is not however contained within the gallery walls, the world itself has become a mass-scale artwork.  Rather than the enclosed, separatist “art world” of white walls and exhibition openings, I propose we are living in an “Art-Earth” where the earth itself has become a human art object.  Bill McKibben writes of nature, “I’ve done my share to take this independent, eternal world and turn it into a science-fair project (and not even a good science-fair project but a cloddish one, like pumping poison into an ant farm and “observing the effects”).” (1124-5).  With our art project, we are doing the same, our art project has a material effect, our garbage is not separate from the world but dangerously entangled with it thus erasing the division between the natural and the unnatural.  The earth is so deeply entrenched in our art project that it has begun to involuntarily represent our waste back to us through strange nature/plastic hybrids: animals die and begin to decay exposing stomachs filled with plastic, part-plastic rocks called plastiglomerates form (and return to the gallery as readymade sculptures).  Our art project is beyond us but also inside us in the form of microplastics, the idea of the “Art-Earth” connects the separatist, closed off world of art to human waste production demonstrating that seemingly detached practice of human waste production is fundamentally entangled with the (increasingly unnatural) natural world.

References:

Davis, Heather. “Plastic: Accumulation without Metabolism.” Placing the Golden Spike: Landscapes of the Anthropocene. Eds. Dehlia Hannah and Sara Krajewski. Jank Editions. Portland, 2015. 66-73. Web. heathermdavis.com. 12 April. 2021.

McKibben, Bill. “From The End of Nature.” The Norton Book of Nature Writing. Ed. Robert Finch and John Elder. Norton. New York, 2002. 1120-1130. Print.

Reichle, Ingeborg. "Pinar Yoldas: An Ecosystem of Excess." Ed. Heike Catherina Mertens. agrobooks. Berlin, 2014. Exhibition catalogue. 18 April 2021. https://www.academia.edu/8499404/Forever_and_Always_Strategies_of_Artistic_and_Biological_Adaptation_in_the_Plasticene_Age

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  1. After reading ‘The “Art- Earth”’ its core meaning profusely resonated with me, particularly with my own eco-concept that I have been experimenting with, ‘nature inscape’. In this piece, the author wrote “our garbage is not separate from the world but dangerously entangled with it” evoked an emotional response from myself to understand and appreciate the colossal damage plastic and littering has caused the natural world. This piece of literature is quite provoking as I felt shame after reading about how deliberate human destruction to the natural world through plastic has destroyed all parts of the Earth ranging from plants to animals. Lastly, after learning about the ways plastic fails to decompose but rather invades and infiltrates the environment in unwanted ways, was a significant awakening moment to realise the detrimental impacts human beings have been causing and continue to cause by disregarding the connectedness of the natural and unnatural world. Hereby, this piece proves that the only way forward is for humans to embark on an ecology of repair and begin to unlearn our previous perceptions about the natural world.