Futures in Excess

Historians divide geological eras into different “ages”, and we can say that ours is the Plastic Age. This human-generated organic material is now part of the natural world, as the Great Pacific Plastic Patch shows. For Daniela Silvestrin, a cultural manager and curator specialized in bioart, this is where the artistic speculation of artist Pinar Yolas starts. What if life started today in these plastic wreck-filled oceans? What kinds of life forms would emerge out of this contemporary primordial ooze? Yoldas’ Ecosystem of Excess is the answer to these questions. She makes us face the issue of climate change, imagining the post-human world we are increasingly building with the overwhelming amount of waste we produce. We have developed a “throw-away mentality” that has transformed us into a geological force. We need to redefine our way of thinking about nature, and that’s what Yoldas does, projecting us into a future without us yet created by us.