Teofil Mihăilescu

This is an installation made to draw attention to the unsolved problem of the continuous presence of plastic in the contemporary world. The column is made of the overlap of 9 identical modules, roughly shaped like triangular prisms. Each of these modules has a height of 34 cm and consists of 36 plastic bottles of 2 liters each (for mineral water), connected in the plan of an equilateral triangle. The plastic bottles are tied with copper wire from the dismantling of used electrical coils. The total of 324 bottles making up the installation come from the consumption of 2 liters of drinking water / day / person, in a family of 4, over 81 days. This version of a column of infinity is intended to draw attention to the absolute presence of plastic in everything the contemporary world means and to the infinite problems it seems to generate. The installation is an invitation to meditate both on unsolved problems related to the ad exteriori world (environmental pollution, lack of sustainable and realistic solutions to limit plastic disposal or recycling etc.), as well as to implications related to the ad interiori world (the presence of plastic nanoparticles in the body of almost all marine and/or terrestrial animals and humans, etc., generating complex risks for everything that means the balance of the trophic chain at the end of which we, humans, are the “beneficiaries” of the largest amounts of plastic due to the phenomenon of bioaccumulation). In this light, this column of infinity can be seen as a segment that can be repeated endlessly forming a kind of chain of the drama of human existence under the sign of plastic (pollution), like a DNA chain that is the basis of the composition of all living beings. Remaining unanswered and accentuated day after day, the plastic tale can dramatically transform our existence…