Plastic bags might be the most annoying and harmful byproducts of our consumer society. There are few more sorrowful views in nature than a tree covered with polyethylene. Unless, of course, you’re talking about the work of Endre Koronczi.
Hungarian artist Endre Koronczi had a strange vision of plastic bags becoming a living, breathing part of nature, and he created a crazy art installation called Ploubuter Park. The artist even wrote a myth which tries to explain how the creation might have come to be:
A few decades ago, a new species appeared in the urban environment. Their appearance is known to all, they spawn around high-traffic consumer centres and after they are unleashed, they start to have their stories on their own. Some stay close to their birthplaces but more wonder off on a long journey or serve the Man. By then all individual possesses its own personality. The light, almost bodiless creatures begin to live as separate souls.
Their movement is without any sort of regularity and repetition, showing common traits with living organisms. Studying them is a joyful task, during observation a variety of choreographies unfold before us. It is easy to spot the metaphor for freedom in their dance.
The souls float on the border between existence and vision. Their existence is characterised by immateriality and lightness, which is brought to life by the wind. The wind, which in itself can never been seen but only seen thought its consequences. In the trees’ rustle, the light breeze touching our faces. Etc.
The Ploubuter Park is the home of the study of this newly discovered species. The architecture is based on the observation of the natural habitat of the species. Those, which had been categorized by their habitat and their behaviour towards human, show a variety of pictures from the wild to the captured or domesticated, from the loners to the pack members.
This time we can study the pack-behaviour of these souls in the controlled observation post which was installed in the airflow of the bank of the Danube.
It’s one of the weirdest pieces of art I’ve ever seen.
I’m really glad that I could visit Ploubuter Park before it was dismantled. The experience was almost magical. The 20-meter-long tricolour wall of 250 plastic bags was rustling gently in the fresh river breeze as I stood beside the swaying steel wire frame. The setting sun lit up the air-filled bags, and the whole thing did indeed seem like some kind of friendly living entity.
To me, the following set of images almost feel like nature photography.
Pictures: Attila Nagy/Gizmodo