What is the balance between plastic and organic and how can they coexist in art? Based in Montreal, the emerging artist Alex Cote deploys a cross-disciplinary practice that travels between art and science, ontology and ecology, technology and spirituality. In his PLASTIC.ORGANIC series he explores these questions, while promoting innovation in multidisciplinary practices, integration of new technologies for the stage and sensitive experiences within ecosystem and community. Influenced by the international performance scene, the contemporary multidisciplinary arts and the shamanism practices, he integrates technologies to bring out the symbolical, mythical and cosmological senses, allowing a subversive look of our conscience.
PLASTIC.ORGANIC
Photographic series, 2017, France and Portugal
Performers: Alex Côté, Julia Sinelnikova, Mariana Sevilla Matos, Mathieu-Philippe Perras
The new millennium propels the human being in a radical ontological evolution, revealing a critical ecologic crisis where the ethical and biological boundaries have been overpassed. This urgent situation inspires the creation of Plastic.Organic, using a giant plastic sheeting to bring outward a visual harmony within the contrast between the organic and the plastic.
Therefore, the photographic series explores the transformation of the human being surrounded by plastic, materialism and overconsumption. Bringing over a quest for the sublime where an infinite attention of the environment’s complexity is sought from the observer, Plastic.Organic questions as well animism through symbolic images in which bodies, plants and plastics evoke the ontological mutations of our time. The pollutants and the plastic materials that find their way in the performance are metaphors of the large-scale planetary perturbations caused by unsustainable human desire.
In the photographs, performers work with nudity to feel different states of vulnerability, symbolizing the disappearance of the human being behind its plastic consumption. Oscillating between lightness and gravity, meditation and suffocation, humanity and deity, my work aims to bring out symbolic issues concerning all lifeforms on Earth towards the third millenium. As David Suzuki expressed in his book Under the sun : ‘We’re all connected into this fragile web of life.’
« The impact of plastic on our oceans is tremendous. Disrupting the food chain and accelerating the extinction of multiple living creatures, it pollutes the very water that helps keep our planet alive. »
« Every year, almost 100,000 marine animals die from ingesting or suffocating on plastic bags. »
« Scientists predict that by 2050, our oceans will carry more plastic by weight than fish. »
Can we find harmony between plastic and organic?
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