BERLIN.- With An Ecosystem of Excess, the
Ernst Schering Foundation presents the first solo show of the US-based Turkish artist Pinar Yoldas in Germany. Created especially for the Foundation’s Project Space, Yoldas’ installation shows new, speculative species born in an imagined posthuman ecosystem.
In her research work, Pinar Yoldas refers to the American oceanographer Sylvia Alice Earle who argues that “Earth” is, in fact, a misnomer and that the planet should be called “Ocean.” Oceans are the life support system of the planet. Four billion years ago, the ancient ocean, the primordial soup, gave birth to the very first organic molecules and was brimming with prehistoric living organisms. Today the composition of the oceans is undergoing a dramatic change where synthetic molecules are taking over. Anthropogenic waste has filled our oceans in less than two decades. A striking site in this respect is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. About the size of Central Europe, it is a monument to plastic waste on a global scale. In terms of Kantian aesthetics, it is a truly “sublime” kinetic sculpture built by all the nations around the Pacific Ocean through many years of mindless, unsustainable consumption. According to Captain Charles Moore, environmental activist and discoverer of the Trash Vortex, “the ocean has turned into a plastic soup.”
Given this development of the oceans from primordial soup to plastic soup, An Ecosystem of Excess asks a very simple question: “If life started today in our plastic debris filled oceans, what kinds of life forms would emerge out of this contemporary primordial ooze?”
As a new Linnaean taxonomy of post-human life forms, the project introduces pelagic insects, marine reptilia, fish and birds endowed with organs to sense and metabolize plastics. Inspired by the groundbreaking discovery of new bacteria that burrows into pelagic plastics, An Ecosystem of Excess envisions life forms of greater complexity, life forms that can thrive in man-made extreme environments. Starting from excessive anthropocentrism, An Ecosystem of Excess reaches anthropode-centrism, by offering life without mankind.
