Plastic Gusts (project) Original

https://www.luzinterruptus.com/?p=23873

Plastic Gusts is an idea for a light installation on inhabited façades, built with recycled materials and created with the help of the local community. It forms part of our ongoing line of work in which we use plastic as a symbolic material to speak about environmental crisis, consumption, exploitation of the planet’s resources, and overflow.

The piece is a version of an earlier idea titled Plastic Gusts that Occupy the Air, now adapted to the façade of a building. The openings are filled with strips of recycled plastic which, stirred by fans placed inside the building, burst out into the street in a hypnotic motion, accompanied by the eerie rustle of plastic. The building appears to breathe out waste.

The atmosphere of the installation shifts depending on the chosen light. With cold white light, the plastic gusts move like icy air currents erupting from within. This effect seeks to visualize the sheer amount of plastic we consume and expel without pause, as though it were part of our everyday breathing.

With red light, on the other hand, the building seems to be on fire. The windows glow as if engulfed in flames, though what burns here is not fire, but trash: plastic waste derived from petroleum, which we accumulate and try to erase in recycling plants that can no longer keep up. Plastic, a fossil material turned into residue, becomes a powerful image directly linked to global warming, rising temperatures, and the very real risk of wildfires we now face each summer.

The installation is made from locally sourced materials: lightweight packaging plastics, bags, industrial offcuts. They are selected, cleaned, cut into strips, and assembled in collective workshops. The strips are tied to a mesh metal grid attached to the façade openings until they are fully covered. Inside, fans and lights bring the plastic to life.

The piece requires no building work or complex technical setup—just open the windows, and wind and light do their magic.

Plastic Gusts is not decorative. It is a luminous warning, where the invisible takes shape, and what had been piling up inside pushes to get out. The building itself screams and bursts open, as if it could no longer hold any more.