“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is the battle call of resource management. The idea is that we should try to 1) use less materials, 2) keep using the things we already have longer, and for more functions than originally intended, and 3) as a last resort, recycle the materials we didn’t reduce to start with and couldn’t reuse once we already had them. The broken recycling bin that Elena Goukassian brought in to the repair shop was a perfect if yet a bit sad illustration of some of the problems around this important question. This blue, plastic recycling bin, itself a tool for helping us be kinder to our environment, had itself started deteriorating far too early (I think) for being helpful to this important task. The bin itself didn’t look very old or used, but the plastic itself had just stared ripping apart. Elena showed me how a large part of the plastic had simply come off in her hand, and when I applied just a little bit of stress to it, huge pieces just flaked off and came apart in my hands. It was as if the plastic had gone all brittle, aged prematurely so to speak. I am just guessing now, but I assume it has something to do with unevenness in the material, with faulty production processes and with low quality raw materials. I have often had similar experiences with objects made out of recycled plastics, even though seldom as pronounced as in this case. Also, plastics go brittle with age even when made from high quality “first generation” plastics, it just takes a bit longer.

So how does one apply the 3R’s to a plastic object like Elena’s recycling bucket? Obviously, if she wants to help the environment, she needs a recycling bucket. It is hard to see how she could find a double use for it, reducing either the need for the recycling bucket itself or else for another container she also needs. What else could she possibly use it for if she was at the same time collecting recycling materials in it? The recycling is also a bit hard, proven by the low quality of the plastic in question, which it is my guess originates from the object already having been recycled too many times at it is. If this wonder-material plastic really becomes so useless when recycled a couple of times, can it then really be said to be recyclable? Shouldn’t we rather look for other materials that can really be recycled into something useful? Plastic waste reminds me of another wonder material, that was once the staple of much older civilizations than ours, and that still form distinct geological layers in sites of old settlements. I am talking about pottery shards. In pre-industrial societies, ceramic vessels was very much the same kind of all purpose useful material for storage, food industry and cooking that plastic is for us. It also had some similar qualities and problems. It was cheap enough to produce, very good at holding liquids and keeping food fresh, but often broke and once broken almost impossible to repair again. Pottery also wasn’t suitable for recycling. One couldn’t just grind down the broken ceramics and remould it into new clay vessels. Once fired, the clay is irretrievably changed into a strong, if yet brittle, mineral material. A pot breaks easily, but pottery shards last for thousands of years.

The broken pots of Sumerians, Babylonians and Romans were simply discarded and thrown away, and make no mistake, those ancient civilizations also created such a huge amount of waste that their cities slowly rose several meters on the piles rubbish they themselves created. The difference to our own waste creation, is that the organic and ceramic waste produced in the old was non-toxic to the land, so that the thousands upon thousands of pottery shards building up under an ancient city, simply formed part of the soil, fulfilling the same function as gravel or pebbles would. Our plastic shards, however, which also breaks easily and just like the pottery of Rome, also refuses to break down in nature, is toxic and really not the kind of stuff we want our grandchildren to grow their potatoes on. What to do then, with this endlessly accumulating, in reality un-recyclable, toxic layer of broken plastic building up around us? Reducing seems a hard sell, recycling in the long run not viable, so that leaves re-using. In my imaginary future projection, we will have more and more plastic shards around us, and given their toxicity, less and less natural materials that we could use instead. So we would have to find new uses for the shards of our own broken civilization. Melting them together just produces new plastic of inferior quality, fusing them together likewise, apart from also being toxic for the craftperson doing so, but maybe they could be woven or stitched together?

Elena’s west is an all plastic garment, and as opposed to the many industrial products created from both crude oil and plastic waste, it was hand made using no chemical processes. It is not very warm, not very elegant, and not even very comfortable, but it does fulfil the increasingly important function of reminding us in which direction we are all heading.

The small mirror-clad trinket box had been found at a thrift store, but Justina Buckles had missed that one corner was already cracked. It was sort of attractive in its own way, and for me as a maker, it was immediately obvious that I would have to do something with the mirrors. I was especially attracted to the engraved patterns in the mirrors, acting like a layer of obfuscation, actually getting in the way of seeing a single, clear image in them. The patterns suggested that a feeling of mirroring and reflection was more important than the actual use of them to say, check your make-up. That layering and self-obstruction of functions was very attractive to me. If I wanted to do something new with the mirrors though, the first task would have to be getting them off of the box, if possible without breaking them. Needless to say, they didn’t all survive, but enough did for me to be able to continue with the next stage.

One big square and four narrow slivers had survived intact. That was just enough for me to start experimenting. My idea was to enhance the contradiction between actually showing a mirror image, and just confusing and hiding what was being shown. I placed the large mirror as a backing in a narrow box I quickly put together from scrap wood. The four stand-ups which hold narrow mirror pieces, are hinged on pegs in their top and bottom, so that they can revolve around their own axis and reveal and reflect different patterns and mirror images.

It was quite clear to me that the natural wood of the box stole way too much attention from the mirrors, and would have to be painted black. Unfortunately, I was finishing this piece on the very last day of the repair shop and just couldn’t find the time to paint the box myself. Luckily enough, Justina turned out to be gifted with practical skills, and didn’t mind finishing the piece for me. Thanks Justina! I actually find the exchange happening even more interesting in the cases where the recipient of the sculpture has taken active part themselves, even if this only happens by an accident or necessity so to speak. I was also very happy to receive a few nice photos of Everview in situ, one of them here below, showing how it works as a kind of painting, kind of sculpture, kind of decorative mirror, but above all I hope, as a reflection on reflectiveness and its deceptive qualities. Looking at the box from a bit of a distance, one can’t really get a clear idea of what one is seeing, the reflected image sent back being all cut up and also obscured by the engraved patterns in the mirrors themselves. The blackness of the frame itself being an absolutely necessary quality, since black is a very modest colour that always steps back for anything else next to it to take the centre stage.

Becca Kallem came in with a perfectly fine ring, just a bit worn maybe, but which represented a broken relationship. It was a simple silver ring that her x had bought her as they were on holidays together. With a pre-fabricated statement rather than a personal message, I found the ring not really holding the same seriousness as a wedding band, but still I guess in some way expressing a wish for a more serious relationship to come. Anyway, it hadn’t worked out, so now Becca wanted something creative done to her ring. My response was to think of the ring or band in different contexts, and imagine another kind of band altogether, but that could stand in for a failed relationship. My solution was to incorporate the ring into a small figurative sculpture.

The material is a kind of two-component liquid plastic. You mix the two transparent liquids together, and quickly pour it in a mould, and within 15 minutes the mix has hardened into a white plastic, feeling very much the material of toys. I built up the dog from plasticine, and to make sure the ring ended up fused around the dog’s neck, without having to remove and glue back his head, I had to make the plasticine model with the ring already there. I then made a three part plaster mould around the figure, carefully removed the plasticine (but left the ring there) and cast it with the liquid plastic.

After painting the dog was perfect, really looking like a cheap plastic toy you could have bought in a dollar store, or why not when on holiday? This one though, not holding any empty promises. A dog will always be faithful until their death, as we all know, no matter who we are, what we do and who else they meet later on. Isn’t that why we humans just love dogs?

Ananda Roopa brought me an old book he had found at home while cleaning out. He wasn’t exactly sure where it had come from, but thought it had belonged to his mother-in-law who had taught English lit at high-school level. He said there were many books being cleared out from his home right now, but this had somehow appealed to him, and because of this, he had taken it to The Temporary Art Repair Shop. I could clearly understand why. In a way, an anthology of poetry and prose like this was a kind of physical embodiment of an English lit teacher. Not enough time to really go deeply into any specific poet or writer, and most of the little brats don’t care that much anyway, but instead a comprehensive and organized rush headlong through literary history, starting with Beowulf and finishing with, well someone at least 50 years dead by now, God protect us from contemporary literature. This first band dutifully started with Beowulf, but since it was only the first of several bands, it reached no further than Blake.

So, to create an even denser condensation of the old anthology, I decided to focus on Blake. After all, he was the last in the band, the most contemporary of them, the one handing the batten over to the future so to speak. But what was I going to do with him? Leafing through the ten or so pages with a selection of his poems, I was struck by how consistently he was writing. Not just that he of course followed the traditional anatomy of a poem, with most of them divided into between 3 and 5 stanzas of between 4 and 6 lines each. Furthermore, the content of the stanzas was such, that I felt they followed a certain pattern, not all together clear to me. To explore it, I decided to turn the Blake part of the anthology into just one concentrated poem, relying on the structural similarity between all his poems but encompassing the entire selection. However, I didn’t want to pick and choose, which would have been far to easy and would surely have produced a lovely kitschy poem, but wouldn’t have tested my hypothesis that Blake was following an internal logic of his own not just formally but also with his content. So, I made a Blake cut-up.

To produce the text I obeyed the following rule: Take the first half of the first line in the first stanza in the first poem. Then the second half of the first line of the first stanza of the second poem. Then continue with the first half of the second line in the first stanza in the third poem. Complete it with the second half of the second line in the first stanza of the fourth poem. And so on. Meaning, I cut out half a line at a time, and between every cut I moved on to the next poem, but to the position in that poem following correspondingly after what I had just pasted on the paper. When I got to the end of the list of poems, I went back to the first again. That way I slowly worked myself through poems and stanzas until I had produced a poem as long as the longest of Blake’s. With this I mean it had 6 stanzas, which his longest had, but only 4 lines each stanza since that was his most common type. The text that produced itself in this way, I called Blake-Out, and pasted on a black card which I framed.

The Land Camera Model 150 was produced by Polaroid from 1957-60. The one that Victoria Reis gave me was apparently still working, or at least so she assumed, but how was she to know given that one can’t buy the film any more? Obsolete was her verdict, and I fell bound to agree with her. Still, it opened just as it should, folded out its telescopic accordion-like lens holder with a few clicks and pulls on hidden levers. As opposed from with today’s smartphones, one could figure this out with pure sight and some testing and logical thinking.

The extendible lens compartment really excited me. I definitely wanted to use it for something. A bunch of ideas went through my head. First I tried to make a holder for an iPhone in the innards of the old camera, so that Victoria could still use it, but the optics involved proved too much of a challenge. Then I briefly abandoned the idea of using the cameras optics, and instead planned turning the textile and rubber accordion behind the lens into a foldable holder for business or credit cards. Given Victoria’s vast collection of contacts, that would surely have been appropriate, but not so challenging, so I am glad I gave up that idea. Instead I turned the idea of obsolete on its head and pushed it to its extreme. By taking away some mechanical parts from the back of the camera, I managed to open up the space behind the lens. I then attached a thin sheet of silk paper exactly in the plane where the film would have been exposed, and covered it with a piece of transparent acrylic glass for protection. Finally I needed to find a suitable hood to cover the back of the open camera and provide the necessary darkness. A black nylon sports t-shirt from Walmart proved the thing. Now, if Victoria opened the camera, aimed it at a bright source of light, like outside at daytime for example, and crept in under the hood, she would have her very own Camera Obscura, projecting a perfect upside down image of the world on the silk paper. Instead of adapting an obsolete camera for the future, I had taken it back to its very origins.