Wasted Away - Art and research by K. Fernandez

AWAY WASTED

Karina Fernandez

WASTED AWAY

End Notes ,

INTRO

BA NA NA

Please repeat, this time slowly: Baa naaa naaaaa

And then much, much faster: BA/NÁ/NÁ!

It almost feels as if your hips begin to move to the lush Caribbean rhythms of: Chá-chá-chá, Bá-ná-ná

‘Guess this crazy skirt of mine, is the thing driving me mad …

Can you feel it, too, gal? 1

... Cannot? No surprise.

Bananas embody, like almost no other, the so-called Western colonial era (When it did stop? When it began?) and have a well-earned chapter in the arts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Once a rarity and exotic, we now see them in the supermarket, the media, the streets, the arts, and our plates. Banana overload. So much that we no longer notice them: life as usual.

Eventually, I learned that banana peel fiber could absorb heavy metals from polluted water; a handful of research teams were into it. This sparked my curiosity; given my experience working with vegetal fibers to do paper, I decided to process and paste the peels out.

Much still polluted water flowed under the planet’s bridges until the final work was done. I am presenting in this script the becoming process of the mix-media installation with a soluble sculpture named “Wasted Away.”

“Wasted Away” is one work of a series signaling the existence of people, knowledge, and new technologies ready and capable of generating change and staying idle while the world as we know it falls apart. In this sense, “Wasted away” is intended as an appeal to promptly react with the articulation and execution of the myriad of new and proven methods already available and aimed at regenerating a devastated global landscape.

1.WORK

About Description

“Wasted Away” is the title for a multimedia art installation created during 2022/2023 with a soluble sculpture and a soundscape. It draws attention to issues on consumption, waste, pollution, and their effect on biodiversity. The materials used include banana peels, water, light, sound, glass, motor, magnets and steel.

Six glass containers with samples of banana peel fibre in various processing stages are on top of a table. Inside one of the containers is a cast of a human sacral bone — out of such fibre — gradually eroding and dissolving in water. A low-pitched soundscape plays in the background. The installation points out that sustainable technologies can invaluably help to tackle critical environmental problems yet remain largely unused in the face of increasing global calamities.

Core concept

‘ Wasted Away’ merges and confronts long-lasting biological decomposition processes with eco-technological possibilities; the sacrum is a sturdy bone and one of the last to break down in a decaying human body, while banana peel fibre is scientifically proven to absorb and remove heavy metals from polluted water bodies.

The image of the object-like human sacrum bone softly dissolving in water within a closed system is a visual comment on the actual situation on planet Earth, with its alarming numbers of species exponentially decreasing and disappearing direct or indirectly through pollution and global warming; humanity, as such, is not exempt from this.

PLAY video

THE SACRUM BONE

Throughout the ages, bones have been associated with life; they were often considered the seat of the soul and the vital forces in the belief that, since they remain, they can also be reanimated and, therefore, are the door to rebirth in this or the afterlife.

There is no clear explanation about why, in many cultures, and since ancient times, this specific bone was designated so. Hippocrates (Greece, about 400 BC) named it hieron osteon, after the Greek word for “sacred.” The Romans (about 400 AD) call it “os sacrum,” after a direct translation of the Greek.3

Cultures, traditions, and religions across human history have had an understandable concern with human body parts, attributing them with different levels of meaning and eventually including them in their rituals and cosmogonies.2

This is especially the case with the Sacrum bone, designating the triangular bone placed in-between the hipbones and directly under the spine, which has a captivating derivation; still, its true etiology remains enigmatic.

The ancient Jewish tradition believed in the indestructibility of the Sacrum. It was entrusted with the resurrection of the body, specifically out of the tipping point of the bone, namely, the Coccyx4, which resembles a seed. Also, in ancient Egypt, the “Djeb” or the backbone of Osiris - Sacrum included - was considered sacred and the source of permanence and renewing of life, officiating as the central motif in agricultural/fertility celebrations at the banks of the Nile river.5

musa paradisíaca

THE RESEARCHER’S HUB: more than food

It all began in 2015 while looking for information about the alimentary properties of bananas. And there it was; an incredibly young chemist scientist from Brazil, Milena Boniolo, at a TED conference in Sao Paulo6 exposing her and Mitiko Yamaura’s research7 on the banana peel fibers’ capacity to absorb heavy metals from polluted water bodies. This research involves a process where the peel is transformed into fiber and then diluted in water. As a result, it gains the ability to absorb uranium. In the words of Boniolo: “It’s about a simple absorption process, low-cost and easy to implement.”8

A separate study from 2021 indicates that a staggering 114.08 million metric tons of banana waste are generated annually worldwide, resulting in environmental issues like the overproduction of greenhouse gases9. However, this waste could be used for productive purposes rather than letting it decay. Two potential alternatives could be biomass energy production and the creation of paper products. To complete this cycle, a third study from The Lancet Commission reveals that pollution is accountable for 9 million premature deaths annually worldwide.10

A review of this data shows that there is significant data to endorse an approach that explores the potential value of banana peel as a valuable resource rather than simply disposing of them as waste.

2. PROCESS

making of the PASTE

production of a SILICON MOLD with anatomical model

making of a PLASTER MOLD with anatomical model

set up of a PEEL FIBRE CAST

placement of the fibre cast into the WATER

field-recording using CONTACT MICS and HYDROPHONE

tinkering & adjustement of MOTOR and MAGNETS

first HANDMADE SKETCHES for the table and...

DIGITAL SCHEMES for Laser -cutting of the table

1:20

METAL soldering

LASER-CUT

steel sheets

LACQUER paint on steel

3.BANANAS

MATERIAL: BANANAS

History

COLONIALISM AND MONOPOLY

This Chapter follows the material thread and highlights various aspects of the banana as a cultural entity, such as milestones in history and role examples in media and the arts.

Bananas are initially from South-East Asia and entered the New World with European settlers – who, by the 19th Century, were growing them on vast plantations in the Caribbean. Labor conditions on banana plantations were often atrocious and remained, in many cases, so till our days. The mass production of bananas in the Americas (mainly Central America) started in 1834 and exploded in the late 1880s. From 1898 till 1934 and beyond, the control of bananas production,

distribution, and commercialization was enforced by the US to ensure the American companies’ monopoly — mainly United Fruits, afterward renamed “Chiquita” — of the nation’s banana exports in a series of military occupations and interventions in Central America and the Caribbean during the so-called “Banana wars.” These wars settled the antecedent for subsequent US foreign policies regarding armed interventions during the 20th and 21st Centuries.11

In the media

COSTUMES AND VISUAL CULTURE Two cases

JOSÉPHINE BAKER (USA 1906 - France

By the first half of the 20th Century, two well-known women performed dances with bananas on or pending from their bodies. Their costumes marked and changed their lives but were also the signs of the time's sociopolitical and cultural status quo and transformations.

1975) was an American-French dancer, singer, and actress whose career was primarily established in France. She became famous for her dance performance “Danse Sauvage” in Paris in 1927. In this sensational act, her costume consisted solely of a banana skirt and a pearl necklace, which made her an icon of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.

The Exposition des Arts Décoratifs of 1925 sparked an interest in nonWestern art. Baker symbolized many aspects of this fashion trend. Later, she was often seen on stage with her cheetah, Chiquita.12

CARMEN MIRANDA, born in 1909 in Portugal and died in 1955 in the USA, was a well-known Brazilian samba dancer and Hollywood actress. She gained worldwide fame, among other things, for her extravagant Tutti-Frutti hat, which she wore in the 1943 film “The Gang’s All

Here,” earning her the nickname “The Lady with the Tutti-Frutti Hat.” The United Fruit Company took inspiration from this hat for their Chiquita Banana logo. Her rise to Hollywood stardom coincided with the “Good Neighbors policy” of F.D. Roosevelt, following the so-called Banana War, which aimed to improve the United States strained relations with Central and South America.13

In the Arts

HIGHLIGHTS IN A TIMELINE

Throughout Western art history, bananas have fascinated Western consumers often as representations of sexual metaphors, exoticism, and far-off lands; the images depicting the luscious fruit in art reflect the spirit of the time in which they were created.

17TH CENTURY: Dutch Golden Age still-life paintings frequently feature exotic fruits. Artists like Albert Eckhout included bananas in their elaborate compositions.14

1889: “Still Life with Bananas” by Paul Gauguin: Gauguin’s post-impressionist painting showcases a vibrant still-life composition with bananas as the focal point.15

1967: Pop Art movement emerges, and the banana becomes a recurring motif. Artists like Andy Warhol explore the commercialization of bananas in his iconic series of prints titled “The Velvet Underground & Nico” album cover, featuring a banana design.16

1992 -1997 “Strange Fruit”: by Zoe Leonard, a series of object installations displaying discarded peels of various fruits reconstructed through colored stitches, including banana peels. The series draws attention to waste, decay, fragility, and the commodification of nature.17

2002: “Pulp Fiction” by Banksy: a stencil graffiti on the wall of a rail station in London, depicting a famous scene from the film “Pulp Fiction,” where the characters raise their “guns,” which have been replaced with bananas.18

2015: “Boot flower” by Patricia Piccinini: This sculpture by the Australian artist depicts a realistic, oversized banana blossom made from silicone. It explores themes of nature, genetic modification, and artificiality.19

2019: “Comedian” by Maurizio Cattelan: a notable banana artwork by Cattelan, consisting of a real banana duct-taped to a wall. It caused a sensation at Art Basel Miami Beach and sparked discussions on the nature of art and its value.20

THE MATERIAL THREAD

Three main actors compose the theoretical substrate that holds this work together: Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, and Miranda Bruce. Their conceptual threads are interwoven and deeply embedded throughout the text and the installation.

4.HUMUS THEORETICA

Global ecocides and the inability to think (Think we must)

How do we perceive our surroundings, and what do we acknowledge? Our perception is filtered through a difficult-to-disguise apparatus that allows certain things to enter our consciousness while excluding others. Even after this first filtering process, the next question is, which of the remaining items do we still perceive as disposable, and which ones do we categorize as essential? Is this selection process deliberate, or does it simply happen (as bestowed upon us)? The latter shares some similarities with Donna Haraway’s notion of “thought- lessness”21:

“I turn to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s inability to think. In that surrender of thinking lay the “banality of evil” of the particular sort that could make the disaster of the Anthropocene, with its ramped-up genocides and speciescides, come true.18 […] Arendt witnessed in Eichmann not an incomprehensible monster, but something much more terrifying—she saw commonplace thoughtless-ness. That is, here was a human being unable to make present to himself what was absent, what was not himself, what the world in its sheer not- one-selfness is and what claims-to-be inhere in not-oneself. Here was someone who could not be a wayfarer, could not entangle, could not track the lines of living and dying, could not cultivate response-ability, could not make present to itself what it is doing, could not live in con- sequences or with consequence, could not compost. Function mattered duty mattered, but the world did not matter for Eichmann. The world does not matter in ordinary thoughtlessness. […] This quality was not an emotional lack, a lack of compassion, although surely that was true of Eichmann, but a deeper surrender to what I would call imma-teriality, inconsequentiality, or, in Arendt’s and also my idiom, thought-lessness.”22

In the text above, Donna Haraway describes “immateriality” as being opposite to materiality in a sense Miranda Bruce explains in her script “The Matter with Matter New Materialist Theory and the Internet of Things.”

Understood in this light, materiality as a concept challenges the notion that humans are separate from the world they are immersed. That is if we view ourselves as being “alive” and consider things and materials as being “inanimate,” what would stop us from exercising whatever it takes onto “the rest” that is not us, a rest that we see as disposable and that has no other agency than to serve our purposes? Miranda Bruce dwells on this idea and explains it as follows:

“What do I mean by materiality? I’d like to start with an old idea: think about a block of clay and a sculptor: usual ideas about matter is that, before the clay is sculpted by the artist, it is formless. It only gains meaning, presence, legitimacy and life after it has been given an intelligible form.” 23

She goes further on to explain the concept of hylomorphism:

“This is an example of hylomorphism: a term from Aristotle to denote the relationship between being and forms—where structure is something that is given to form through being. It has been used as a metaphysical starting point for much philosophy and social theory, whether or not that’s been acknowledged”.24

She then formulates a key question and subsequently answers:

“ […] How would something like New Materialism look at it? First: it would argue clay as a material is not inert. In fact, it has a very specific molecular makeup; it has specific responses to stimulus, it acts on other bodies in particular ways: for example, it dries out human skin and hardens under high temperatures. So instead of passive matter being acted upon by an active life form, the meeting of clay and sculptor is actually an encounter between material bodies, each with their own agency and capacities”

Donna Haraway extensively explores materiality in a sense as exposed by Bruce, and she coins the notion of “tentacular thinking” or thinking with tentacles, that is, thinking in a way that is not abstract but “touches” and feels the things it explores. Regarding this, she also comments on critical concepts expressed by author Anna Tsing in her book “The Mushroom at the End of the World,” describing what, in my view, is an example of best practices under the umbrella notion of “tentacular thinking.

“Anna Tsing urges us to cobble together the “arts of living on a damaged planet”, and among those arts are cultivating the capacity to reimagine wealth, learn practical healing rather than wholeness, and stitch together improbable collaborations without worrying overmuch about conventional ontological kinds.”28

Donna Haraway discusses Anna Tsing's book in further detail:

“She performs thinking of a kind that must be cultivated in the all-too-ordinary urgencies of onrushing multispecies extinctions, genocides, immiserations, and exterminations.[…] Refusing either to look away or to reduce the earth’s urgency to an abstract system of causative destruction, such as a Human Species Act or undifferentiated Capitalism, Tsing argues that precarity—failure of the lying promises of Modern Progress— characterises the lives and deaths of all-terrain critters in these times. She looks for the eruptions of unexpected liveliness and the contaminated and nondeterministic, unfinished, ongoing practices of living in ruins. She performs the force of stories; she shows in the flesh how it matters which stories tell stories as a practice of caring and thinking.”29

My work delves deep into the concept of materiality in the way it was previously exposed; I choose found objects, discarded materials, overlooked characters, and improbable heroes as the subjects of my creative undertakings and open up a space through my praxis where they eventually get a different voice and a body in new flesh. “Wasted Away” take the case of banana peels ubiquitously considered debris and sheds light on some of its often overlooked properties.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to: Ruth Schnell, Veronika Schnell, Wolfgang Fiel, Ulli Armbrüster, Martin Kusch, Niko Krisitis, Harry Unger, Thomas Felder, Lisa Harraser, Sascha Zeitzeva, Sascha Eselböck, Roman Spieß, Ulli Kuhn, Reinhold

Krobath, Helmuth Fahrner, Beno Groer, Daniel Ortiz, Roman Hansi, Johanna Werschnig.

WASTED © AWAY

BY KARINA FERNANDEZ

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