Microplastics, Nanoplastics and Bacteria
Design is associated with intelligence and craftiness. By contrast, destruction seems a brutish and simple act. However, when it comes to the new challenges raised by the Antropocene, we have to come up with a new and clever solutions beyond the functional life of a product. In this new geological epoch, man’s influence has a lasting effect on earths eco systems. In the Antropocene, design faces the task of re-connecting with living matter by finding ways to get rid of stuff, instead of creating more.
Conny and FAMA team explaining the fashion mashine project - 
Fashion Machine
When you wash a fleece sweater in the laundry machine, more than a million microplastics are released in the ocean. This is one of the ways in which fleece is an immensely polluting fabric. This whole summer, fashion designer Conny Groenewegen and volunteers knitted giant fleece banners that slowly engulfed Mediamatic’s headquarters. Fashion Machine reflects the impact of fast throw-away fashion on you, your environment and our world. This October the project will be taken down. When we do so, we look for the afterlife and the possibilities of transforming the material.
Speakers
Maarten Vanden Eynde
As an artist, Maarten Vanden Eynde engages in long term research projects that allow him to focus on a specific topic for many years. Relating to the significant impact of humans on the planets, Maarten’s work engages with the process and consequences of time. Between 2008 and 2015, he worked on Plastic Reef, a growing installation of melted plastic debris from the worlds oceans.
Maurizio Montalti
Maurizio Montalti is a designer concerned with a thorough, trans-disciplinary, research- based practice, whose work addresses social and environmental challenges. In The Future of Plastic, he researched possible alternatives and potentially different futures, in which plastics exist as a completely natural material. During this biotalk, Maurizio reflects on the opportunity of collaborating with micro-organisms. In this way, he hopes to create viable alternatives and perspectives, to change the way we - humans - relate with the ecosystem we’re part of.
Conny Groenewegen
Conny Groenewegen zooms in on the issues associated with industrial production and labor processes. Her research traces back to the origins of methods: revealing and re-establishing the sparkle of manufacturing before the fashionable took its toll. During this edition of Biotalk, she reflects on her project Fashion Machine and shares and discusses work with Maurizio and Maarten on the afterlife of fleece. What to do with this highly polluting fabric?
Information
Biotalk: The Design Away Perspective
Thursday 2 November
Program starts at 20:00
Mediamatic Biotoop, Dijksgracht 6, Amsterdam
Tickets: €7,50 pre-sale | €10 door | Students €5
