The Plasticization of Matter
Plastic is the intimate manifestation of our cultural fixation with and dependency upon oil. And yet it is a material beyond oil, a material that effectively effaces its origins in oil; it is the afterlife of oil, the ineradicable residue of the era of petrocapitalism. Through infrastructures and imaginaries, plastic has built the world that we inhabit, including the digital networks upon which we increasingly rely. But it also refuses to let us go, for plastic can also be understood as a medium, in the sense of a clairvoyant, communicating with long-dead organisms to make their vital presence felt amongst the living, where the haunting legacies of plastic are voiced. In this talk, Heather Davis will consider the relationship between plastic as a media and plastic as a medium, where the plasticization of matter reorganizes our notions of time.
Time:1830 BST
@artcenteredu
