Melting Plot. A Statistical Sculpture. Part 1

16.05.2022 - 18.05.2022

Design School Bogdan Šuput, Novi Sad / Srbija
Detelinara, Novi Sad / Srbija

Workshop in cooperation with the artist group and plastic recycling cooperative MINIPOGON, Belgrade, students of the Design School „Bogdan Šuput“, Novi Sad, New Media Center _kuda.org as part of MINIPOGON'S project (NON)WORKING HOURS – TUNING THE SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY, part of Novi Sad – European Capital of Culture 2022.
When Novi Sad will be European Capital of Culture in 2022, it will be the first city in a candidate country to hold this title. This makes it particularly interesting to invite the students of the Design School in Novi Sad, in a very multicultural region of Serbia, to reflect on their identity within Europe.... How do they think of themselves, how would they describe / define themselves, what parts of their identity matter to them and why.

This part of self-narration leads directly to the Art of asking (oneself) the right (or wrong) question – in other words: Statistics. So, I would like to invite the students to collect data & desiderata regarding different fields (e.g. languages spoken, living area + circumstances, socio-economic situation – e.g. part-time job after school or not, relatives abroad, holidays or visits in other countries, wish to live/work/study abroad, political interests, sexual orientation, gender, ...), depending on the students’ interests and priorities.

Part1:
During three days, from 16-18 May 2022, we worked together in a small park in front of _kuda.org in the Detelinara district of Novi Sad. Students of the Design School Bogdan Šuput presented posters inviting the neighbourhood to join the plastic recycling in newly made collectors. Neighbours kept passing by, bringing material along, radio and local tv was also present, etc. In a collective effort, everybody joined the plastic recycling process, i.e. bringing along, cleaning, washing, drying, sorting by type (HDPE = type 2 vs. PP = type 5 vs. "suspicious ones"), sorting by colours, shredding and finally melting it to new shapes.


[Quelle: https://web.archive.org/web/20220930194623/http://heterotypia.net/meltingplot.html]