Litterbugs

(Click any image for detailed view of each box)

While our insect population is rapidly declining, the problem of plastic pollution is growing at an alarming rate. Both are microcosms that surround us. Both are almost invisible at first glance. But where one was often considered a pest and the other a symbol of progress and prosperity, these roles are beginning to reverse. By making insects out of stray plastic, I try to make this problem visible and personal to the viewer. (Click any image for larger view)

A few years ago during a summer holiday I went to the beach like any other tourist except that I’m not really into laying on a towel for hours. Neither is my girlfriend and since we noticed a lot of garbage around we decided to clean up the area a bit.

The thing about cleaning is that once you get deeper into it and have a closer look, it’s not as clean as you thought at first. Between the cigarette butts, plastic straws, fishing wire, and bottle caps, there were smaller pieces. And between those there were even smaller pieces and smaller smaller things.

It felt like a microcosm of plastic was presenting itself. (That sounds a lot more poetic than realizing that the beach is more or less a plastic dump.)

Being the beachcomber that I am I picked out the prettiest pieces of trash and kept them. It had turned into a large pile pretty fast when my girlfriend strongly suggested: “Do something with it… or get rid of it.” So I did what any smart person would do, I hid it from her.

Cut to about a year later, I’m on my roof where the top of the tree behind us grows onto the terrace. It’s sunny, I have a coffee and I’m admiring a bird in the tree. After some time I start to notice other things. First, another, smaller bird. Then a spiderweb, then the spider. Some flies, crickets. The longer I stand still the more the tree around me is moving, teeming with the smallest and coolest and craziest looking insects. A microcosm, almost invisible a moment ago, is presenting itself to me.

Suddenly it clicked. These two microcosms, almost invisible at first, that have nothing yet everything to do with each other. In this work the insects and plastic waste need each other to exist. In the real world however our insect population is declining at a rapid pace while plastic production, waste and the problems that come with this are growing at an alarming rate.

I’m using the litter we have too much of to create the creatures we have too little of. By up-cycling found plastic into bugs I’m visualizing this serious problem with a cheerful and positive image.

I rarely determine what kind of bug I want to make but dig through the piles until I find something that sparks an idea. I use scissors and a knife to cut things to shape but prefer to keep the pieces more or less intact so that the everyday object stays recognizable. If you look closely you will see everyday items like bottle caps, make-up brushes, key rings, USB-cables and many single use items. Mass consumption has made us collectively into litterbugs and thus part of this problem.

The boxes these litterbugs are presented in are also found and made with recycled materials. Old cigar boxes, photo frames, kitchen drawers or teabag containers.
I clean them, paint them and cut (found) glass to size. It’s a tedious process but spending that much time with all this “waste” creates another awareness of the concept of disposability.

The bugs are not really organized by any class or logic. I’ve tried to recreate the feeling of various bug collections put together in a larger collection as you would see in a museum of natural history. Where a museum however mostly focuses on archiving and preservation, this work expresses the hope that these litterbugs will soon become extinct.