Pam Longobardi: Drifters
Installation, Wall Sculpture and Photographs
Opening Reception: Thursday, Sept. 4, 4pm
Pam Longobardi is a Professor of Art, and former Associate Dean of Fine Arts of the
College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA.
http://www.pamlongobardi.com/

	Driftweb

DRIFTERS Project Statement
My current project *Drifters* focuses on the global issue of marine debris and plastics in the ocean. I have been working on installations and public artworks that address the interconnectedness of the land and sea, between humans and the ocean biosphere. My work has a strong environmental focus that has come to the foreground as awareness of climate change, extinction and human impact has become more urgent. The Drifters works include sculptural wall and floor installations and site photography to contextualize the origin of the object materials. I collected the material in these works as it washed in from the Pacific Basin onto the South Point of Hawaii, the southernmost part of the United States. The currents transport and mix the debris into a colony of drifters that temporarily alight and gather on the beaches awaiting the next hurricane, tidal shift or big swell. I was both amazed and shocked by the visual impact of the astonishing array of marine debris I encountered.

The ocean functions symbolically as the unconscious of the world. It is the great ‘formless.’ The regurgitating ocean now spews forth all manner of plastic materiality. I believe this artwork can function to raise awareness and transform behavior, while providing a provocative visual delight. The plastic materials and driftnets have a potent visual appeal because of their amazing coloration and the transformation undergone over time and distance as they drift the ocean currents. They also carry a message of our need to connect our activities and habits with their impact on the world ocean. I see the debris as a portrait of global late-capitalist consumer society. The plastic elements at first seem attractive and innocuous, like toys, some with an eerie familiarity and some totally alien. At first, the plastic seems innocent and fun, but it is not. It is dangerous.

	Astroturf

My role in collection and presentation of these objects is in the form of an intervention. The intervention takes two tangents: one is an environmental intervention that physically removes the debris material from the natural environment and resituates the objects within the cultural realm, their point of origin. The second form of intervention is a kind of freezing of the object’s evolution/devolution: they become freeze-framed in different states of object-hood, from recognizable to wholly mutated. I place these objects in meticulous arrangements on wall and floor. Encounter with these objects poses a mirror in front of the viewer in that one can recognize the self and one’s own participation in the creation of this materiality. Highly personal objects of hygiene and body association, such as toothbrushes and combs, are recurrent. The large driftnet sculptures based on web forms are called /Driftwebs/. The webs function metaphorically as a connection between the land and the sea, and convert the discarded nets into a 'trap' for plastic. It may be poetic justice that the discarded fishing nets are now caught themselves. These web-like forms reinforce the interconnectedness of the web of life and our place in it.