Artist Statement - The Only Way to Work is to Play

My ongoing project is Plastic Fantastic, an immersive environment for play made from post-consumer water bottles. The environment consists of a 16-foot diameter geodesic dome covered in over 4,000 plastic bottles. One may participate in the making of the dome and/or in one of the programmed events - an opening reception, a video shoot, an activist action, a public talk, and/or a sunset dance party.

The dome serves as a centerpiece in a larger organizing practice of social relations. I arrived at this trajectory through studying Fluxus artists who used play and experience as the medium to make art. Play is an important part of my practice and the ethos of Plastic Fantastic. Play is unscripted, spontaneous diversion. My video work isolates moments of play with ideas, gesture, and performance of the artist practice.

In Nicholas Bourriaud’s theory of Relational Aesthetics, social relations are the medium. At Plastic Fantastic you can experience everyone doing the same thing at the same time, be it taking labels off water bottles, watching a video or dancing. “These days, utopia is being lived on a subjective, everyday basis, in the real time of concrete and intentionally fragmentary experiments.” (Bourriaud)

Claire Bishop’s Relational Antagonism, also functions in Plastic Fantastic. “In this model, the kernel of impossible resolution on which antagonism depends is mirrored in the tension between art and society conceived of as mutually exclusive spheres – a self-reflexive tension…” (Bishop). The work must facilitate thinking, make the viewer aware of context, and engage democracy that invites expression of opposing opinions that can never be resolved. The overwhelming use of post-consumer plastic water bottles challenges the viewer to think not just about recycling of plastic but also about water equity, access to water, its scarcity and safety. For Plastic Fantastic, Relational Antagonism operates in terms of its positioning within popular culture at large.

Plastic Fantastic creates possibility for social change through play, collectivity, community development and production. Through this process we improve our relationship with the everyday. My video practice is humorous, self-referential documentation of this contribution to cultural production.