Art Rogers, photographer extraordinaire, forgot his phone, so this is what happened......
We are far more flexible than we had imagined.
Since 1999 Richard and Judith Lang have focused their attention on just 1000 yards of tide line where they have collected plastic washing ashore on Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Although the news about plastic pollution is dire, they bring the excitement of scouting for treasures and the pleasure of the creative life to an otherwise difficult topic.
Art Rogers, photographer extraordinaire, forgot his phone, so this is what happened......
Esteemed scholar Ranjan Ghosh, Professor in the Department of English, University of North Bengal in India presented Plastic Nature (9/23/24) at the Environmental Forum at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard. Not only does he talk rocks (plastiglomerate), he posits a new way of talking about language itself and brings to mind a plastic way of thinking.
We are pleased that he uses our graphic chart to describe the geological age in which we now live. The age that we named The Plasticene Discontinuity in 2004 for our exhibition at the Bay Model.
What kind of a negotiation and home has nature built with plastic, a material that is a travelling and transformative genius? In a neo-materialist and an interobjective presence, plastic and nature have built a deeply entangled relationship – the problematic connection between the nature of plastic with what Ranjan Ghosh calls “plastic nature”. Within the material democracy of plastic, nature has been the object of change, but hasn’t nature through its own rounds of plasticity changed the way we see nature today? Hasn’t nature changed itself and plasticized plastic in ways that are startling and unique? The subject-object position has undergone massive revision as also the philosophy of seeing a material and nature. What, then, is this plastic nature?
With so much discord and so many catastrophes in the world, we are grateful for moments of creativity, community, and connection.