How Waste Can Be Beautiful

What to do with the good old Compact Discs in the world of MP3, iTunes and Spotify? Don’t throw them away!Artist Elise Morin and architect Clémence Eliard used 65,000 old CDs to create an enormous installation called Waste Landscape in the world’s shiniest city Paris. Rolling hills of hand-sewed together disks of shiny metal in the classic courtyard of the Centquatre at the Halle d’Aubervilliers in Paris can be compared with the concept of contrast like the pyramids at the Louvre. Although this is a (con)temporary art-installation, it is also a comment on the ‘life’ of the product that was once useful but now thrown away with the ease of throwing away a piece of paper.

Explained in the words of the artists:

“The project joins a global, innovative, and committed approach, from its means of production until the end of its ‘life’. Waste Landscape will be displayed in locations coherent with the objectives of the project: art’s role in society, raising consciousness towards environmental problems through culture, alternative modes of production and the valuation of district associative work and professional rehabilitation… Waste Landscape is at the crossroad of contemporary art, landscaping and environmental concerns.”

This project reminds me of the Plastic Soup phenomenon, but instead of the plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean, this is a little ocean of plastic waste. With only this installation these discs don’t come to the end of their ‘lives’, the CDs will be recycled into a raw material after the exhibition, ready to be used again in another useful product of this sustainable era.

Click here to watch a video of the art installation.

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