Origin – Germany – followthethings.com

“A Global Positioning System“
A art work / animated film created by Melanie Jackson, first exhibited at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK.
Two screengrabs from the film are featured above. Watch it in full on the artist’s website here.

If you’re interested in finding out who makes your stuff, it’s important to make a strategic choice about what stuff is best to follow. Artist Melanie Jackson makes an excellent choice – what better to guide your way than the technology that helps to guide your way. An in-car GPS Navigation Assistant. The kind of device you could buy in the 2000s to stick to your dashboard. Type in the destination, and it would help you on your way, showing the route on screen. She gets some funding for a trip to China to visit a factory where they are assembled. But this isn’t anything like enough of the story of this thing. She looks into its in many many ingredients, and finds out where and by whom they are sourced. She reads news stories, collects photographs, and turn to drawing to bring all of these connections together into a 12 minute animated film. There’s something magical about animation. It’s obvious that animation is not an objective account of the life of a thing, but something that’s been imagined and made. Animation allows the complexities of trade to be conveyed in a way that would otherwise be impossible either because the scale of the task would be too enormous, or because permission would not be granted to access the industrial sites that matter. There’s a powerful argument that’s made about ‘follow the thing’ research that things can be – for these reasons – ‘unfollowable (see Hulme 2017). But animation – and other creative approaches to thing-following (click the ‘make the hidden visible’ tactic button) – provide means to work around this. This is a mind-blowing film. Its amazing what you can learn in 12 minutes!

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A Global Positioning System. followthethings.com/a-global-positioning-system.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

followthethings.com
My shopping bag | Recycle my waste

2017

UNBRANDED

SINGLE USE PLASTIC BAG

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“Plastic bag“
A short film directed by Ramin Bahrani and narrated by Werner Herzog for ITVS.
Published on YouTube, embedded in full above. Search online for other streams here.

Remember those thin plastic bags that used to be available, free, at the checkout? This is the starting point for Ramin Beahrani’s short film. What lives do they lead after the shopping is emptied from them at home? And what if one of them could tell that story for itself (in a droll Bavarian accent)? What would it say? It’s exciting to have finally been chosen, there at the checkout, to fulfil your destiny. To help a shopper carry their shopping home. The shopper-bag relationship is short-lived, but beautiful. But what if she then uses you to pick up her dog’s poo? And put you in a bin? How would you feel about her then, as your life continued, further and further away from hers? You’re not the slightest bit biodegradable. Your life is going to last for ever, starting in a landfill dump. What’s it like to be there with millions of bits of other trash? Imagine being caught in the wind, blown through the countryside, travelling hundreds of miles, and ending up in the sea, with the fish, possibly causing them all kinds of problems. Who and what might you have seen and met on your journey? What would you ponder about your life now its purpose is so far in the past? It’s a silly and unbelievable plot, but a wonderfully moving film. Viewers are surprised to find themselves empathising with a plastic bag. Caring about its fate. How its life could have been different. Maybe this is the best way to change people’s minds about the mountains of waste created by capitalism and its commodity culture. See what you think…

Page reference: Molly Healy, Josephine Thompson, Daisy Aylott, Lily Andrews, Kate Ward, Charlotte Rooker, James Swain, Edward Denton & Ethan Langfield (2024) Plastic Bag (taster). followthethings.com/plastic-bag.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes.