BEAUTIFUL TRASH: ARS BREVIS, VITA LONGA

Visual installation by Adrian Arias
(((click to enlarge)))



The long life of plastic invades the beaches of all coasts, almost without exception. Where there are humans, there is plastic: colored plastic, small fragments that were part of a lid, a container, a chip, a sorbet, a plastic fishing net, a nylon cord, a glove; something that was made of plastic in a factory very far from the beach. Though, it cannot destroy it because the majority of plastics take more than 400 years to degrade. Those small pieces of color become a part of the "esthetic" of the beaches and eventually, the mortal alimentation of a bird or mammal that confuses it with true food.
The still pieces of garbage are the inspiration for this project, along with the lack of consciousness of human beings to leave their footprints long after their deaths.
BEAUTIFUL TRASH: ARS BREVIS, VITA LONGA, is an approximation of the "color" esthetically and ethically caused by the interruption of natural space with the "remains" of garbage, basically plastics. The installation topography video and performance that make up BEAUTIFUL TRASH are created from materials taped, photographed and taken from the beaches of Peru, Mexico, Spain and the United States.



The idea is to generate a collective consciousness about the existence of the unmeasured use of plastic, the ecological problems caused by the excessive amount of garbage on the planet and the real existence of the Trash Vortex* in the north Pacific, as well as to satirize the "fantasy" coloring that we give to our beaches with the remains of the plastic garbage that we leave.
As can be seen in the accompanying digital models, the exhibition walls will be covered with the images amplified 80 to 100 times their real sizes, in order to increase the impact and nearness to humanity of the "colored Garbage" playing with the idea of magnitude created by Pop artists.



In the middle of the main gallery a video will be projected on suspended cloths, using still and in-movement images taken at the beaches for this project. In a central space, a floor of beach stones will stand, over which a "Humanoid of plastic" and its island will be built. This will use the containers glasses, lids, and other plastic objects that visitors will bring. These will be cut into small pieces, as if they had suffered the friction of the sea and wind.


---------------
* "Trash Vortex" or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a type of garbage formation where for every kilo of plankton there are 6 kilos of plastic. In actuality it is the twice the size of the state of Texas or the size of Peru (more an area of a million, three hundred thousand square kilometers.)

Here you can see a video animation film of Mette Menting about the Trash Vortex

AA, San Francisco, October 2008 (Translation by Nina Serrano)

© adrian arias