Artist and writer Ursula Troche showcases a video using washed-up discarded fishing rope, recovered and stitched together, to explore the growing threat of ‘ghost gear’ and the haunting of our seas by plastic waste. Picked Up the First Pieces has become the start of a series of video works using imagination to tell plastic stories.
A surreal theme emerged, as the ghost gear seemed to take on a life of their own: they acquired new characters in their ‘second life’ outside of the ocean, and the backyard behind my house — in which I filmed the first and the middle scenes — began to suggest a good stage for them, before being stitched into new works (their third lives).
Ursula Troche is a visual artist and writer working with space and place and moving between work, text and locations to explore hybrid and ‘intertidal’ spaces and interrogating edges.
My ‘Pick Up the Pieces’ project coalesced from my ongoing work with plastic waste, from stitching up plastic packaging, to my performance art show ‘Reverse Osmosis’, to collecting pieces of washed-up fishing rope from my local beach and up and down the coastline.
The title seemed perfect to refer to both the act of ‘litter picking’ as well as to contributing to restore our ecosystem to a better state in the light of our climate crisis. Discarded fishing rope from the sea is called ‘ghost gear’ — an amazing name that says many things: how it keeps on ghost fishing, and how it haunts them and us: the ghosts of our throw-away society, the ghosts of a kind of colonialism, hinting at the vastness of hidden practices, leaving one to speculate what caused them. Every item of ghost gear washed up will be there, ‘up for grabs’ only for the duration of a low tide, so it is important to grab it right there and then. Looking out for them, picking them up, washing them, then stitching them up into artworks began a process of immersive work. I wanted to show this and so made this video, Picked Up the First Pieces.
The film’s title ‘First Pieces’, was to hint at this being a kind of ‘first episode’ of the overall project. There is more I want to say, and so I am planning to make more ‘episodes’ of this my ‘ghost series’.
A surreal theme emerged, as the ghost gear seemed to take on a life of their own: they acquired new characters in their ‘second life’ outside of the ocean, and the backyard behind my house — in which I filmed the first and the middle scenes — began to suggest a good stage for them, before being stitched into new works (their third lives). I didn’t stitch up all of them though: their life in the backyard stage prompted imagination, thinking, theorizing and stories about them, and so my performance piece ‘Fishghost’ emerged.
Another theme in the film, and in my work, is the railway: it runs all along the coast, and so I reach my destinations with it — an ideal coastal line, and essential because I don’t drive. So, like me, the ghost gear comes on the train.
Once, I found a very large bottle, and I filmed it as it was ‘travelling in the train’. I also had footage of a plastic bag and ball. The International Day Against the Plastic Bag was happening the following week, and so it presented the perfect day to launch this next film. It’s a little-known International Day, but I knew it from the previous year, and so I could highlight the day with the film as well.
Filming on the beach and on the railway on the one hand, and the creation of more and more objects stitched up from plastic waste on the other, led to more video-making. The first series I made for children was made with two of my smiley characters made from plastic packaging travelling with me on the train. I wanted to give my coastline a fictitious name, and the title ‘By the Beeby Sea’ emerged.
All of my films are environmental in some way, even if comical, they advocate train travel for example. And even my so-called ‘Road Movie’ is a kind of anti-road movie, where the road disappears in the end (maybe that’s wishful thinking but it’s actually happening in the film….).
You can find more of Ursula’s new video pieces — including Road Movie and By the Beeby Sea — at her YouTube Channel. And there is more to explore at her websites, ColourCirclesite and Ursula Troche art thought poems photos being. The latter includes Ursula’s PUTPie newsletter, which features more on the Pick Up the Pieces project.
For more information, please get in touch: ursulatroche[at]yahoo.co.uk