Hidden ‘Treasures’
2021-ongoing
Sometimes, just when I feel like it. I go for a random walk. To empty my mind, get some fresh air and move my body. In order to get inspired, order my ideas and feeling it all. Getting rid of the brain fog that slowly takes over my entire being when I spend too much time behind my screen or get caught up in endlessly scrolling through social media.
While strolling, sometimes fast sometimes slow, standing still. I come across so many things that make me wonder. Like different shapes of trees, interesting window scenes – sometimes symmetric, sometimes messy – sculptures, playful shadows, and less romantic fairy things like dirt and trash…. The latter intrigues me that I find myself standing still and bending over to investigate the immense sad pieces of lost wondering plastic. Feeling the urge of documenting and capturing these, sometimes hidden, ‘treasures’. In a way that every trash crime scene becomes beautiful ugly piece of art. Something to think about. Something to pay attention to on an ordinary walk.
As a psychologist but also as a human that us concerned about our planet, I have tried very often to get into the heads of the owners of this plastic to understand why on earth they think this is a good idea to use nature as a bin. Well, after several attempts, I concluded that I do not understand and that I never will.
By this project I literally want to make the sometimes-invisible tragedy visible by capturing this first glance artsy portraits of trash to let people think twice and perhaps change slowly behavior to take care of our planet better. Like the plastic soup foundations explains this very clearly. “It is no news that plastic contributes to climate change. The production of plastic amounts to about 5% of the world’s annual production of oil. This way, plastic contributes to global warming. A new study (Royer et al., 2018) also proves that plastic waste contributes to climate change. It’s mostly related to the emission of the greenhouse gases methane and ethylene, which are released from plastic waste under the influence of sunlight. Polyethylene, the most-used type of plastic, emits the most of these two gases.”
Plastic Soup Foundation. (2020, March 2). Plastic waste releases greenhouse gases - Plastic Soup Foundation.
https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/en/2018/08/plastic-waste-releases-greenhouse-gases/
Royer, S., Ferrón, S., Wilson, S. T., & Karl, D. M. (2018). Production of methane and ethylene from plastic in the environment.
PloS One, 13(8), e0200574. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200574