The Particles, The Human Tale of a Dying Water

While man found in water the naturally pure matter, we are now facing the crisis of the «impurity» of the oceans. As a victim of frigolism and the illusory recyclability of plastic, we dump eight million tonnes of it into the ocean every year.

While man found in water the naturally pure matter, we are now facing the crisis of the «impurity» of the oceans. The ocean, the cradle of our life, is slowly being transformed into a tomb for man, who will not survive on a planet with dying water. This natural beauty, tarnished by humans, is gradually being transformed into an outlet for all kinds of waste. Assimilating so manysubstances, it absorbs all the colours, smells and flavours that man pours into it.

As a victim of frigolism and the illusory recyclability of plastic, we dump eight million tonnes of it into the ocean every year. At this rate, and without any real action on our part, the amount of plastic in the ocean is expected to triple by 2050.According to the UN, there would be more plastic waste in the sea than fish. Only 1% of plastic waste in the ocean is on the surface, while 99% is not found because it has either sunk to the bottom, washed up on the coast or, more importantly, has disintegrated. The plastics, which break up into smaller and smaller particles, then form microplastics smaller than five millimetres, which constitute the bulk of the plastic pollution in the ocean. Some of these particles are assimilated by phytoplankton, a single-celled organism otherwise known as cyanobacteria and micro-algae. Representing less than 1% of the Earth’s photosynthetic mass, these tiny aquatic plants are responsible for 30%/40% of carbon dioxide absorption and more than 50% of oxygen production, a phenomenal and frightening result given their vulnerability to micro-plastics. Once inside the organism of these planktonic species, the latter reflect the sun’s rays and prevent photosynthesis, reducing its production by 45%. Moreover, the permeability of phytoplankton to microplastics represents a direct health hazard for humans and animal life. It is one of the major routes of contamination by trophic transfer between the different links in the food chain. Due to their very small size, these particles slip through the net and unfortunately cannot be recovered. We are facing a frenzy of activity of underwater life being suffocated by plastic, a new «vegetation» of nightmares.

The Particles will then enter the immobile layer of the waters, to lift the shroud over the invisible beings, and to plunge the spectator into an abyss of reflection. With the creative image, I offer a new form to the destroyed world of tomorrow by reinventing its structure: plastic materials become the new representative form of phytoplankton. Plastic waste, recovered from beaches and bins, allows me to reproduce these underwater species using a scientific and documentary posture, frontally on a cyanotype background. Inspired by Anna Atkins’ British Algae herbarium, or Ernst Haeckel’s sublime plates on The Artistic Forms of Nature, these productions are a dialectical tension between the sublime and the derisory of a nature damaged by the hand of man.

A search for analogies between the material used and the form is developed: the Emiliania huxleyi becomes a cluster of shower sieves, the Guinardia striata a simple hair elastic, the Licmophora a set of drink stirrers... This sort of apocalyptic prophecy shows a sublimated seascape, deliberately too soft, too artificial, «nowhere does fresh nature breathe» (G. Bachelard). By examining with an attentive eye, the viewer discovers little by little a repulsive whole and realises the deception he is facing.

Concern must surprise him sooner or later, the eye follows this becoming of darkness, it questions the water as it questions its conscience and thus reads in this reconstruction of water the fate of humanity, its future funeral oration. The plastic that suffocates life in unfathomable depths to bury all human misfortune becomes the homeland of human death and transforms our planet into a universe submerged in sad, dark water that transmits strange, mournful whispers. Like water splashed on the face, The Particles wishes to awaken this energy of seeing, transforming the gaze into a clear and easy action leading to a real awareness. I thus entrust to imagination and artistic creation the ambition to excite the desire for transformation of society.