Luigi Claudio

The Plastic Bag Journal: A newspaper in the form of a plastic bag.

A newspaper in the form of a plastic bag. Nothing more and nothing less than a new way of using information and a plastic bag. Nothing excellent nor extraordinary but a simple, little contemporary poem.

A quick use and throw away.
Tpbj points instead to re-evaluting the rapport between use and thought.
In a simple operation where plastic and news (two products which we covered and flooded with! for which you could seriously talk about “pollution” simbolic and real!) become subtracted by induced consumption, automatically and daily more often than we do. How?

The bag invites to a cognitive rapport with the history of the material and the consumption done by man since the 50’s. It was there to represent the historic product which was, not only the fixed use which we did. Objects discounted as if they always exsisted have their own traceable origins and an evolution/epilogue again all to write about and define. Like the news that is printed on top. They aren’t those flashes composes of two words with the verb in third person, which often titles the news programme or newspaper but book quotes. Books, yes. Steps choosen to suggest a perusing, a deepening. For a critical use also of the mind! Books written in the 70’s by Russell and Schumacher for the number ‘00’ which talks of politics and environment with an actuality and an interest even in our days. That is the real news which it wants to spread, that an ample and articulated literature exsisits and it has the power to obtain for the construction of a better sustainable development.

A literature and a translation of thought which waits to be put into practice `and which exsists from when the plastic bag lives. Removed, forgotten but again valid and fertile, often unsurpassed.

That the world has to go on like this which seems ineluctable and strenghtens the exsistence of the plastic bag. Well it’s not like this and it’s the same object to denounce it. It doesn’t follow the news they don’t stop to register the present interpreting it in their rapid and fleeting spread. Tpbj suggests we stop and slow down, to not consume it and to let it talk. A temporal operation which wants to deepen, to invent and project a sustainable development. Sustainable development which implicates the different rapport of Man with the environment and its resources, like petrol from which derives the same material as the plastic bag, certainly, but also and above all: a new critical conciousness which doesn’t hide only in today but will know how to enter and exit effectively from the past and the future and leave the immagination free. Not news to forget nor a bag which is often thrown away after little but suggestions for thought, invited to reflect two minutes more on our mode of consumption which leaves little space to the use and to the thought, to hold back.

Maria Rossi
Translation: Mo Sama