AGUA -2010- by Cora de Lang

AGUA (Water) -


In the supermarket a large ISLAND of water containers catches my eyes, one stands close to the other like a threatened army. This sensation I took home in the morning. Returning to the super market in the afternoon the island had melted away; in the space now threatened to become entirely empty busy employees struggled to set up a new island - of new water bottles against the odds of a permanent grasp of hands to snatch bottles away as soon as they were nicely placed. The same occurred day after day, because water is no longer a commodity flowing in rivers, being drawn out of fountains or of water tabs.
Our minds were conditioned about in what kind of containers one can expect pure water: in plastic bottles!
Me too bought the large water bottles. When I was ready to drop the empty shells in the recycling container I realized I could transform them by alienation from their normal disposal fate.
My art work is done with the recollected and transformed large water containers bought over the time of 2 months while in Spain.
In wanted to stop at least for a while the recycling process and use the break for an artistic expression by modifying this plastic for water into plastic for art, changing a totally utilitarian object into a subversive proposal: No more water would wet their surface, no more suggestion that this is an icon of modern hydration and in the same time a fancy accessory.
Once cuts, and structure come into this plastic world the viewer is challenged to re-evaluate and re-consider his conviction about pure water containers, he is invited to join in for a journey of aesthetics twisted by awareness or vice versa.

In the big two oceans of this planet (Atlantic and Pacific) there are so called Trash Islands that are continuously growing, a slow moving gyre of ten million miles square, almost twice the size of the USA and bigger than Africa! I am talking of disposed water bottles and other plastic that would need an estimated time of 450 years to disintegrate. This ,however, wouldnt mean that it will disappear, it remains as plastic polymers and eventually yield individual molecules of plastic too tough for any organics to digest.

I realize how difficult it is to move against the current. How can we stop all this craziness that is killing our waters and species? If we go on doing this, we will all become plastic beings and maybe one day somebody will recycle us too.