Revealing the invisible: Marine plastic waste and its effects in science-inspired visual art

Kurr, Silvia

Revealing the invisible: Marine plastic waste and its effects in science-inspired visual art

2024

Kurr, Silvia

Humans produce over 350 million tons of plastic waste annually, and this number is expected to triple by 2060. This means that the increasing amount of plastic waste persists, often creating harmful effects. In particular, marine plastic waste chokes turtles and birds that mistake it for food. Microplastics escape sewage treatment plants, enter the marine food chain, and accumulate in bodily tissues, causing health harm. Micro- and nanoplastics have been found in human organs, placentas, and unborn children. Plastic waste is not passive but capable of acting back upon human and nonhuman bodies. It thereby exhibits destructive agency. The paper explores how science-inspired visual artworks can foreground the agency of marine plastic waste, challenging the perception of discarded plastic things as inert objects. In my analysis, I rely on the framework of intermedial ecocriticism and new materialist thought. New materialisms aim to challenge the anthropocentric view of the material world as a passive object and emphasize the human body as enmeshed in the environment. Furthermore, the paper discusses two related issues: first, the invisibility of microplastics waste to the human eye; second, the sense of distance between everyday terrestrial practices and plastic in aquatic ecosystems. Empirical studies of public perceptions of plastic pollution have demonstrated that many people think of plastic waste as “a ‘far away’ problem” (Henderson and Green 2020: 4). This paper shows that the artistic visualizations of scientific knowledge about plastic waste behaviour in the media of photography, sculpture, and installation can reveal the hidden connections between the materiality of plastic and the human body.

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