The oceans of our blue planet are full – full of plastic. Marine mammals suffocate in ghost nets, seabirds starve to death with full stomachs – filled with lighters and lids. Huge plastic sacks waft between the continents on the high seas, and there are beaches whose sand contains more tiny plastic particles than grains of sand.
Together with the Hamburg-based marine conservation organization DEEPWAVE e.V., Anna Mandel addresses the problematic omnipresence of plastic in her new sculptures. Leftovers of our careless everyday life, remnants of the toy world, fishing nets, hoses, disposable lighters and tendril wires mingle with the world of polyps, anemones and black smokers made of shimmering glazes – and raise questions.
It’s not just water that knows no boundaries.
With the things we handle, use, produce and consume down to the last decisive remnant, we move in a global cycle in which we bear responsibility. Each of our carelessnesses not only ends up on our own plates at some point, whether as micropulverized plastic in fish or as sheer absence when the seas are fished dry and deserted. But changes the blue of our planet.
We clean our world. Scrape, scratch, wipe, sweep, swirl, scrub, rub, sweep, vacuum, wipe, polish. And throw away. Broaching on. And what was thrown away reappears. Elsewhere. Pulverizes and deposits on and in. Choked and stuck, deserted and clogged, displaces and overlays the old world, the cleaned, becomes new visible and invisible component, builds in. Unobstructed. In the wrong place. Can’t get rid of it. Never.