Polyethylene_ terephthalate Written by: WetMeWild (Justyna Górowska) Before I started writing this text, I drank a few sips of bottled water in order to slake my intense thirst with a corporate dream of water. The cooled H20, making up 70 percent of my body, was poured in through my mouth, giving me an intense sensation of my interior. Its particles were felt through a tingling in my fingertips and gently trembling knees. A chill pierces through my mouth, breasts, stomach, thighs, calves and feet. Then, against the force of gravity, the sensation returns whence it came from, in the shape of radiation emitted through the tip of my head. My humid, interior landscape has been enriched not only with the soothing hydrogen oxide (HOH), but also polyethylene terephthalate (PET). With water, micro-plastics penetrate my interior, deposit on the walls on my intestine, certain particles become absorbed into the lymphatic system in order to, ultimately, reach my kidneys and liver.1 I am an extraordinarily humid being and what happens in my interior constitutes my existence. The essence of my existence has been filled with a flow of contaminated water, fulfilling, in the same instance, a raison d’être of the aqua-corporation. With every sip of my bottled water, what I am, in reality, consuming is a rapid current of materialised political significations. A flow of economic transactions, techniques of business management, a series of market information. It infiltrates my body, filters though and out its concomitant capital. Drinking the water, I am connected to the great urban settlement, to human exploration or the destruction of natural environment. Our inner life, far from the banality of the outer life, has always remained undis/covered. Here, feelings, fantasies and desires arise, springing up, and are, after a while, diluted in another flow, or else they dry out and disappear.2 However, since the moment of this impending progress of technology and the influence of our products on our bio-molecular ‘I’, the interior has been disclosed. Our body covers are transparent, stripped of any sense of mystery, they become an element of bio-political control. We are ancestors of a new species, which itself is an effect of endless mutations of drifting bodies. We were born to be tainted.3 I’m looking at the label of the water I drank. POLAND SPRING4 has been produced by a company dependent on NESTLE5 , one of the largest corporations in the world. On the packaging, I see a mountain stream, with crystal-clear water flowing down some rocks, surrounded by coniferous trees. Above the refreshing picture, the Poland Spring® 100% Natural Spring Water label. It resembles every other bottled water label – PURE LIFE, Pure Water Perfect Taste, Harmony Water Drink Healthy, Pure Drops – a flow of slogans is 1
https://orbmedia.org/stories/plus-plastic.
Jolanta Brach-Czaina, Błony umysłu [Membranes of the Mind], Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sic! s.c., 2003. 2
“We are born to be contaminated”, quoted in: PSX (Peter Susan Sagat), https:// www.petersagat.sk/. 3
The name of “Poland Spring” water, produced by a company of the same appellation, originates from the town of Poland, Maine, one of sites of its excavation. It has nothing to do with mineral water, since it is derived from deep bore-holing. See: https://www.polandspring.com/. 4
5
https://www.nestle.com/: “Good food, good life – that is what we stand for.”
nothing more than a reality SPAM.6 Fictions of those labels are translatable into intersubjective realities constructed by grand, bottled water corporations. The fiction becomes the mightiest force, outperforming stray asteroids and natural selection.7 What I see is a reproduced image-world, surreal, a post-truth, fake news.8 A long-standing simulation has caused the copy-paste corp.-reality to seem more real than reality itself. Pouring water into me, not only do I quench a thirst of the body, but also a thirst created by corp.-technologies of transmission, the satisfaction of which has become just as essential. I am swallowing an ‘incorporated sip’. The new regime of water control is a regime of desire and subjectivity. My body, consuming micro-plastics, becomes a postproductive body. The product has been extended, turning in the post-product, production has transformed into after-effect. It also becomes re-production, via the repeated process of ingesting the corporate water with millions of other people world-wide. A million of reproduced, plastic-water-filled bottles is being purchased every minute. I am, therefore, not only a post-product, I am a re-product in its repetition. I am one of many copied bodies, repeated, multiplied (repeat, copy, multiply). An endless edition of a microplastics spammed organism.9 Plastic in us becomes spam, incessantly circulating in our blood, polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high density polyethylene (HDPE), bisphenol A (BPA). Exactly like the other one created by machines, sent out by bots, intercepted by spam filters. What is happening to us can be described in the categories of the ‘molecular revolution’. The way our body mutates depends on doses, temperature, a torque of a molecule, regularity and manner of its administration. I am a plastic human, the only real one. Our bodies mutate and the border blurs, they become artificial, the artificial is the natural. The economic system in which we live re-defines the concept of water, turning it into a political object of life management, made possible by advanced techno-capitalism.10 We are subject to mechanisms of control deployed by large aqua-corp.s, according to which water is a paid human right. This is the AQUA Plastic+.11 Water has become more precious than gold. H20 – the blue gold – the ECO coin.12
“BOTTLED WATER REALITY SPAM”, quoted in: WetMeWild, https://www.instagram.com/p/ BZR_fnOnUNk/. 6
7
Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tommorow, London: Random House, 2016.
Fakes news is false, often sensational news, disseminated by means of information transmission. It is no accident that ‘fake news’ was selected as the Collins Word of the Year 2017. 8
Hito Steyerl, “Cut!Reproduction and recombination”, in: e-flux journal. The Wretched of the Screen, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012. 9
Beatriz Preciado, “Testo Junke: Sex, Drug and Biopolitics”, in, e-flux journal. What’s Love (or Care, Intimacy, Warmth, Affection) Got to Do with It?, Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2013. 10
“We receive at least 10,000 particles of plastic per one litre of water.”, after: ORG, https:// orbmedia.org/. 11
Ecological value may become a new model for our economy. The crypto-currency, ECO coin, supports a sustainable model of living, whereby every decision to protect the natural environment translates into the crypto-currency. The currency is managed by a de-centralised, autonomous charity (DAC). 12
