One Third is a series by Klaus Pichler which brings awareness to food waste.
When I saw this work it reminded me of my images of damaged and unwanted items, and I think although the projects are about different things they both touch upon the subject of materialism and consumerism.
The first image in the series outlines the facts about food waste.
He used a receipt to project his message which plays along the lines of consuming. It's something all of his viewers will be familiar with. He tells us that one third of food goes to waste while 925 million people are suffering from starvation. These facts paired together are used to produce a contrast and get an emotional reaction from the audience. I believe the purpose of this series was not only to make people aware of the circumstances but to make people want to do something about it.
He also states 'according to the UN' to make sure these facts have some eligibility, ensuring that the audience will trust what they're being told.
This is the first image in the series. Titled 'Strawberries' it also comes with a caption;
"Sort: Strawberries 'Elsanta' / Place of production: San Giovanni Lupatoto, Verona, Italy / Cultivation method: Foil green house / Time of harvest: June - October / Transporting distance: 741 km / Means of transportation: Truck Carbon footprint (total) per kg: 0,35 kg / Water requirement (total) per kg: 348 l / Price: 7,96 € / kg"
The caption tell us as the audience where the food came from and every little detail we would need to know about the product when we're buying them.
He seems to have then left them until they went rotten to take the image. The result of his techniques, the use of bowl and the rotting food is a highly stylish, classy beautiful yet uncomfortable image.
If the strawberries were not rotten we would be looking at almost a high class advertisement for the strawberries, with the bright reds standing out against the black background and silver tones of the bowl. Because of this there is a sense of what it could have been before time took away the freshness of the fruit. It highlights the waste by emphasising that it was once food, which is further enhanced by the use of the caption. We realise that once it has reached this state we can't turn back time and that it is gone for good and will not be consumed. With the knowledge of how many people from starvation this is what then causes us as the audience to react further.
The style that the artist has used causes for the image to be highly dramatic and so dramatises the message to make sure it's strong. By only having the bowl of strawberries as the subject we can solely focus on those rather than having lots of distractions. They're centred and the only thing in the light other than the flies, almost like a spotlight.
The flies help fill in the empty black space and shows that instead of feeding our people and helping people who are starving, it's being used for pests to lay their eggs and create more of the things we don't want in the world. This shows that we're not helping ourselves, those in need and the world in general. We're wasteful and we're greedy.
This work is incredibly inspiring to me. I appreciate the connection between our work being with things that don't look right, things that we don't like and unfortunate cases. While Pichler's work is more about consumerism and things going to waste perhaps not on purpose but repeatedly, this exact theme could work for my own work - food wastage. I for one have gone to eat fruit and for it to have already gone mouldy. I think this could be classed as an 'ah shit' moment indeed.
When I saw this work it reminded me of my images of damaged and unwanted items, and I think although the projects are about different things they both touch upon the subject of materialism and consumerism.
The first image in the series outlines the facts about food waste.
He used a receipt to project his message which plays along the lines of consuming. It's something all of his viewers will be familiar with. He tells us that one third of food goes to waste while 925 million people are suffering from starvation. These facts paired together are used to produce a contrast and get an emotional reaction from the audience. I believe the purpose of this series was not only to make people aware of the circumstances but to make people want to do something about it.
He also states 'according to the UN' to make sure these facts have some eligibility, ensuring that the audience will trust what they're being told.
This is the first image in the series. Titled 'Strawberries' it also comes with a caption;
"Sort: Strawberries 'Elsanta' / Place of production: San Giovanni Lupatoto, Verona, Italy / Cultivation method: Foil green house / Time of harvest: June - October / Transporting distance: 741 km / Means of transportation: Truck Carbon footprint (total) per kg: 0,35 kg / Water requirement (total) per kg: 348 l / Price: 7,96 € / kg"
The caption tell us as the audience where the food came from and every little detail we would need to know about the product when we're buying them.
He seems to have then left them until they went rotten to take the image. The result of his techniques, the use of bowl and the rotting food is a highly stylish, classy beautiful yet uncomfortable image.
If the strawberries were not rotten we would be looking at almost a high class advertisement for the strawberries, with the bright reds standing out against the black background and silver tones of the bowl. Because of this there is a sense of what it could have been before time took away the freshness of the fruit. It highlights the waste by emphasising that it was once food, which is further enhanced by the use of the caption. We realise that once it has reached this state we can't turn back time and that it is gone for good and will not be consumed. With the knowledge of how many people from starvation this is what then causes us as the audience to react further.
The style that the artist has used causes for the image to be highly dramatic and so dramatises the message to make sure it's strong. By only having the bowl of strawberries as the subject we can solely focus on those rather than having lots of distractions. They're centred and the only thing in the light other than the flies, almost like a spotlight.
The flies help fill in the empty black space and shows that instead of feeding our people and helping people who are starving, it's being used for pests to lay their eggs and create more of the things we don't want in the world. This shows that we're not helping ourselves, those in need and the world in general. We're wasteful and we're greedy.
This work is incredibly inspiring to me. I appreciate the connection between our work being with things that don't look right, things that we don't like and unfortunate cases. While Pichler's work is more about consumerism and things going to waste perhaps not on purpose but repeatedly, this exact theme could work for my own work - food wastage. I for one have gone to eat fruit and for it to have already gone mouldy. I think this could be classed as an 'ah shit' moment indeed.
Comments
Post a Comment