Posts tagged plastic | Culture Making

18 November 2009

"Shapeshifter," white polypropylene plastic chairs (2000), by Brian Jungen, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa :: via Brainiac

What's not to love about a whale skeleton crafted from the bones of our ubiquitous white plastic patio furniture? The artist's other work also remixes modern artifacts to reenvision traditional First Nations/Native American forms and patterns: golf-bag totem poles, baseball-mitt warriors. Jenkins' show Strange Comfort runs through next summer at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

re: art, biology, chairs, cultural worlds, native american, plastic

Nate:

20 October 2009

"St. Bartholomew's Church, Chodovice (interior)," redesigned by Maxim Velcovsky and Jakub Berdych (Qubus Studio), photo from the studio's site :: via Dezeen, 9 April 2007

Two Czech designers were given the opportunity to reinvent the interior of a (presumably Catholic) chuch in the East Bohemian village of Chodovice (here, I think). I haven't been able to tell if the redesign was permanent, or how it was received by the church's parishioners. The designers write: "The central nave has been stripped of dull repaints and left totally exposed so that visitors can watch the course of history on fragments and details on the wall. Illuminated by chandeliers adorned with pressed and roughly cut crystal, the bare space is dominated by an “army” of legendary chairs designed by Verner Panton with one crucial detail added – a Christian cross carved through the back of the chair." There's a lot going on here, much of which I find pleasing, some amusing. I love the idea of warmly revealing the church's fragmentary history—and its connection to the generations who have worshiped in the space. The plastic chairs offer a wonderful double-reading: for design initiates they are indeed iconic, probably the first (1960), and possibly still the best-looking of the global family of one-piece molded chairs. For most people, though, they would probably read not as $260 design classics but as their $3 cousins, which are no doubt in use in many low-budget churches around the world. But those four-legged kin lack the stunning priest-in-white-cassock-esque sweeping view from behind.

re: chairs, churches, design, europe, history, plastic

Nate:

10 March 2009

"The Plastics Inventor" (1944), directed by Jack King, animated by Paul Allen et al, produced by Walt Disney :: via Boing Boing

I was delighted to find online this short animation, which is discussed at length in Jeffrey L. Meikle's book American Plastic: A Cultural History. It's a wonderful reminder of how the associations with a cultural good—particularly one as plastic as, well, plastics, change over time: in 1944, plastic was mockable as shoddy, junky, and—here's the real surprise—the realm of do-it-yourselfers and backyard alchemists. It was hyped as the product of the future, but "such visions melted away as quickly as Donald Duck's plastic plane when exposed to the reality of shoddy home-front plastics. By portraying plastic as a so-called miracle material that dissolved in contact with water, Disney animators relied on the audience's familiarity with similar catastrophes—with plastic sink strainers that melted in hot water or buttons that became greasy blobs at the dry cleaners." (The book's introduction is also fascinating: for some reason I'd never thought to hear the famous line from The Graduate—"Just one word...Plastics..."—as anthing more than just good solid late–'60s career advice.)

re: animation, film, flight, plastic, satire, technology and change

Nate:

21 January 2009

The Indian capital bans plastic bags—just like San Francisco, except the regulation seems to be a lot further-reaching (besides covering millions more residents). Evidently Rwanda, Bhutan, and Bangladesh already have similar laws.

re: environment, government, horizons of the possible, plastic, pollution, technology and change, transit

Nate:

from "Delhi to outlaw plastic bags," by Randeep Ramesh, guardian.co.uk, 16 January 2009

Carry a plastic bag in Delhi and you could be imprisoned for five years. Officials in India’s capital have decided that the only way to stem the rising tide of polythene is to outlaw the plastic shopping bag.

According to the official note, the “use, storage and sale” of plastic bags of any kind or thickness will be banned. The new guideline means that customers, shopkeepers, hoteliers and hospital staff face a 100,000 rupee fine (£1,370) and a possible jail sentence for using non-biodegradable bags….

Civil servants said that punitive measures were needed after a law prohibiting all but the thinnest plastic bags – no thicker than 0.04mm – was ignored.

Although the government had originally concluded that plastic bags were too cheap and convenient to be disposed of, the authorities appear to have been swayed by environmentalists who pointed out that used bags were clogging drains and so providing breeding grounds for malaria and dengue fever. There is evidence that prohibition of plastic bags can work. Countries such as Rwanda, Bhutan and Bangladesh have all had bans enforced.