Event 2: This Mortal Plastik

The session with Jess Irish was very educational for me about the environment, as well as how the message can be delivered effectively by using the artform of storytelling. I saw the theme of the session as an extension of professor Vesna’s lectures on ecology and art, and biotech and art.

 

The development of plastic fascinated me as it marked a feat of human innovation. However, tying back to my blog on the relationship between biotech and art, innovation can have a line it could cross after which it harms us. In Jess Irish’s short film, ‘This Mortal Plastik’ I heard arguments about the good side of plastic I can confess I never heard before. That we will no longer have to ransack the earth, and its animals, for resources would have been a very compelling sales pitch for plastic. One of the animals is the whale, whose body fat will no longer be required as a resource for our own essentials. Riding the wave of a slim morality, and mostly the multiple uses of polyethylene, plastics spread across the world instantly. Poetically, this is how life forms also spread in the evolutionary stages of our ecosystem.

 

The ecological impact of plastic on the world has already been well documented, but Jess Irish’s use of storytelling to do this adds a different dimension that reports and research cannot. It provoked emotions and trains of thought that are deeply personal to each of us. By using the whale as her central subject of the impact of plastic, there is a full circle effect as plastic has gone from saving whales from us to harming whales through us. Further, by emphasizing the epidemic like nature of the spread of microplastics, and how ‘they are everywhere and in everything’ the film successfully finds a common point of relatability for every viewer. This session showed me the power of effective storytelling to push a narrative like raising concern and awareness.