TEXT/VIDEO
Transmutation, CYFEST, Yerevan
Maria Cristina Finucci
The industrially produced objects are extremely vulnerable since they are constantly discarded and tossed by humans. Both, man and goods, are victims of the consumption culture.These rejected objects get eventually destroyed into pieces and melted all together to reach an entropy situation.However, with the help of artificial intelligence, they get to organize a new form of life for themselves.
Almost ten years ago answering to the question posed by Carolyn Christov Bakajev: What does an object feel when destroyed? on the Manifesta 14 catalogue, I answered: an object, when tossed, loses its shape and gets into a leper colony -as I consider the Garbage Islands- so it gets ousted from people’s life. In a capitalistic society the consumer goods value coincides with their cost. Their vulnerability is given by their price; the lower the cost, the higher the vulnerability. In some case is not even the preciousness of the material, but merely the price that determines the preciousness.
One throws away a straw, but not a fancy object even if they both are made of plastic. There is an analogy with human’s vulnerability. My question today is:What does an object feel when, after being destroyed, having undergone a metamorphosis and having regained strength, goes back to be part of the cycle of life and universe?
How does it feel when, after its apparent death, it rises again in a different shape of life? Is there still in itself a memory of its previous life?
In 2014 for an installation at the MAXXI Museum in Rome I opened the first Embassy of the Garbage Patch State, for that occasion I made a registry census of thousands of different plastic objects that could possibly end into the Garbage State after their use and I posted their photos on the wall of the Embassy. Each one is catalogued and has a progressive number. For At CYFESTIVAL in Yerevan, I showcased thousands of objects after their transformation from mineral to organic.