Amalgamated Fragmentation–Plastisphere

In my long-term and multi-part project on the Anthropocene I examine fragmentation and how old and new matter merge to an unknown amalgamate through technical and biochemical interventions. Never-before-seen chemical and physical processes revolutionize our world, modify the molecular structure of earth, air and water, create new molecules, bacteria and micro-organisms that irrevocably change the body and life of human beings. As soon as a demarcation between different materials is no longer possible, elements of animate and inanimate matter increasingly mix. It is believed that most of these changes are caused by microplastics that meanwhile permeate earth, water and air. As the biosphere describes life on the earth's surface, the floating plastic waste that is by now colonized by organisms and represents a new marine ecosystem is called plastisphere. For this part of my project I extended the plastisphere to the earth, plants and the human body, since all life is dependent on water and microplastic has recently been detected both in the spring water of the Alps and in the human intestinal tract. Thus the cycle of infection is closed and a change of the DNA structures of all organic life is foreseeable. Since everything on earth is infused with microplastics, the pictures show scientific depictions of microbes and bacteria that have settled on plastic waste and can either transmit life-threatening diseases or decompose plastic into even smaller parts. This body of work consists of digital collages using ancient and contemporary representations of all above mentioned subjects. I either compose settings and photograph them to later assemble them with other images or I use as primary source scanned or reproduced ancient images from the fleamarket or webbased pictures to be completed with digital elaborations. The sizes of the digital prints vary from 8”x8” to 47”x24”.