In 1995, World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin said, “the wars of the next century will be fought over water” [source: Village Voice].
I am building on an existing experiment in using bottles of water filled with layer images. Water is a resource that will become scarce in our near future. The last war fought over water was 4,500 years ago in Mesopotamia [source: Leslie]. While religion and oil have driven recent and current wars. Water is a resource that a started current and future conflicts both on the local and global level. The bloody conflict in Darfur, Sudan, that began in 2003 and killed as many as 400,000 Africans, started, in part, over access to a diminishing water supply [source: The Guardian].
In this incarnation, I will use the Vox bottles with their shape reminiscence of the test tube and their status as ultra hip expensive water. The plastic bottle is a symbol of controversy It the first worlds it a status symbol of health and wealth paying 1,000 times more than for tap. In third worlds it is a one of the leading causes of pollution. In 2002, approximately 31% of soda bottles were recycled, while only 11% of water bottles are due to lack of deposit required on water bottles. This is shocking when you consider that bottled water is the second most popular beverage to soda.
I am interested using the medium of water confined in its container as a means of addressing issues of the individual in the terms of stem cell research, abortion, and human rights. These issues and rights slowing disappearing like our water, so slowly and quietly very few people are taking notice.
The piece addresses the small battles that having big impacts on the long term over our bodies, minds, actions and environment. The Vox bottles will hold layer images in cased in water that slowly eroded and change as they are handled and view. There will be empty bottles and materials that invite visitors to contribute to the piece. The end piece will have a narrative that reflects the worlds of internal world of the body, the political world, the environment and the global. The goal is to bring awareness and action not matter how small to the issues at hand and preserve them.
What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.
Margaret Mead
2 Responses to Proposal of Work: Bottled – Pollie