Plastic garbage guarding the museum. Winterthur 2012

Photo sent by the museum one month later

Photo sent by the museum one month later

The past month of June we went to Switzerland with our lights, invited by the Gewerbemuseum of Winthertur to form part of the Oh, Plastiksack!, monographic exhibition on plastic bags curated by Ida-Marie Corell and Susanna Kumschick.

As always, we chose to work in the street, just because we wanted the whole world to be able to see what we were doing and how we were doing it.

The monographic theme being the bags, we wanted to collect the largest number of them from among the inhabitants of the city, our friends at the museum had the wonderful idea of exchanging bags for tickets to visit the exhibitions, a very interesting proposition that helped to collect more than 5,000 bags and a lot of visitors eager to take a free tour of a museum of applied arts as exemplary and didactic as the Gewerbemuseum.

For our piece Plastic garbage guarding the museum, we chose the most colorful and luxurious bags from among the thousands that were donated and with them we filled two large containers that were located on either side of the main door of the building. We placed light inside them and left them for the next 4 months to see how they evolve.

The first few days of the installation were the most striking and spectacular, with all the bags perfectly placed and filled with air. After a few weeks the display was no longer as pleasing to the eye and surely after 4 months it will look truly decrepit

This, far from worrying us, helps us to make sense of an installation which you can experience, in a visual manner, the reality of plastic bags, objects generally created with the purpose of inviting consumption and building an image that speaks positively about the brand, but that once used, if not carefully recycled, they become very damaging and impossible to remove from the environment.

In addition, on the day of the inauguration, we used more illuminated plastic bags to intervene in the surroundings of the museum, filling a small square with them in which we created a gathering space in which the people could sit and dedicate themselves to finding, for example, those of their favorite stores.

In addition, we presented visitors with floating illuminated trash bags, that the people carried throughout the whole city, filling the sky with small plasticized full moons.

Many thanks to the whole team from the museum, Susanna, Sarah, Markus, Serge, Laurin… that made us feel at home, to the volunteers who generously gave their time to help us, to our artist friends Ida-Marie, Claudia, Marie-Claire, Nils, Dodi… that helped and accompanied us, and with whom everything was made much easier and more fun, and of course to all the citizens of Winthertur that gave us their most precious bags and kept us company during the set-up.

The majority of the photos are by Gustavo Sanabria. Except for some that the museum has sent us in which the installation can be seen to be losing its attractiveness.

More pictures here.

Time of installation: 3 days.
Damages: none.
Exhibition time: 4 mounths.

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