Cornelia Stehling

-fragments

melted plastic bags

/PROJECT 7, fragments

Plastic bags as leftovers from the shopping culture are turned back into a product for the shopping culture. While it seems to close the circle of consumption, it tries to ask the question of the price for the circle itself.

The project »fragments« is trying to answer a very basic scenario in product design – a hanger for clothing. The focus lies more on the material than it does on the function. Conventionally hangers are made of recycled plastic. The waste of packaging of all sorts is turned back into a solid material which is stabil enough to carry clothes and cheap enough to be massproduced and massused. Ordinarily their origins are hidden behind homogenious surfaces, behind black colour and nothing reminds of the process behind it. The project »fragments« probably consists of basically the same ingredients, but makes the original material visible. Big shreds of plastic bags of well known brands have been melted together to a deformed mass of different styles of pictures, graphic elements, fonts and colours. The pattern is different in every hanger and parasiticly uses the design that's been made in order to sell a brand, against it. The colourful and confusing impression of the product represents the overstimulation of the marketing-industry. It further makes it harder to ignore the consequences of excessive consumption.