TRASH

Share

SAN DIEGO MIDDEN

Inspired by their research into the devastating impact of plastic trash on the world’s oceans, Margaret and Christine Wertheim of The Institute For Figuring endeavored to keep and track all of their household plastic trash. After cleaning, bagging and storing their plastic trash for just one week, the sisters were shocked by the amount they had consumed, and were motivated to continue this exercise in ecological awareness for four years. In spite of its scale, the Midden, which contains all of the sisters’ plastic trash from that period, represents a fraction of what the average Western citizen uses, as the sisters worked hard to minimize their intake.

The San Diego Midden is the first time the IFF will have collaborators on the Midden Project. Over the course of the exhibition, the gallery will be filled with San Diego plastic accumulated by NCM visitors. The Wertheim’s aspiration in engaging a larger audience to collect and contribute their trash is to make tangible the amount of waste once individual produces and call attention to growing issue of plastics in the oceans.

Become a San Diego Midden contributor! Start collecting your plastic trash today with the help of the IFF’s How to Make a Midden Guide.

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR FIGURING

The Institute For Figuring is a non-profit educational organization founded by Margaret and Christine Wertheim and based on Los Angeles. Since its inception in 2003, the Institute For Figuring (IFF) has developed exhibitions for art galleries and science museums around the world, including Inventing Kindergarten at Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, 2006) and The Logic Alphabet of Shea Zellweger at the Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles, 2007-2010). In 2005 IFF directors Margaret and Christine Wertheim created the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, which has been exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh, 2007), Chicago Cultural Center (2007), The Hayward Gallery (London, 2008), Track 16 Gallery (Los Angeles, 2009), the Science Gallery (Dublin, 2010), and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Washington, DC, 2010-2011).