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<\/a>A forklift loads one of five bales of plastics recyclables, all destined for the Bates campus, onto a flatbed utility trailer at the Casella facility in Lewiston on Oct. 25. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cOne of the folks moving the bales asked me, \u2018Is it art yet?’\u201d said Adriane Herman, a Maine artist<\/a> who\u2019s behind the exhibit Out of Sorts<\/em>, now on view on the lawn outside Commons. \u201cIt\u2019s an interesting question.\u201d<\/p>\n Herman\u2019s installation is best appreciated in context, including why it\u2019s here: as part of a bold new Bates Museum of Art exhibition, Anthropocenic:\u00a0Art About the Natural World in the Human Era, <\/em> which opened last week, featuring artwork examining humanity\u2019s mark on the planet with pathos, wit, and an eye-opening diversity of conceptual approaches and media<\/a>.<\/p>\n Herman, who has shown her art at the Portland Museum of Art, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, among other venues, is a Bates visiting artist. Supported by the Learning Associates program, she is joining classes and meeting student groups.<\/p>\n This bale of plastics contains colored high-density polyethylene (HDPE), such as bottles of detergent and liquid drain openers. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n On loan from Casella Waste Systems, the bales that comprise the installation Out of Sorts<\/em> contain five types of commonly recycled plastics, according to their identification codes<\/a>. Casella also bales up paper, metal, and glass.<\/p>\n Bale 1: Uncolored high-density polyethylene (HDPE)<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 e.g., milk, cider, water gallon jugs; large vinegar jugs. These have a plastic identification code 2<\/em>.<\/p>\n Bale 2: Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)<\/strong> \u2014 e.g., water bottles, peanut butter jars, ketchup bottles, power drinks. These have a plastic identification code 1<\/em>.<\/p>\n Bale 3: Colored HDPE<\/strong> 2<\/strong>\u2014 e.g., laundry detergent, bleach, motor oil, and antifreeze containers. These have a plastic identification code 2<\/em>.<\/p>\n Bale 4: Mixed HDPE plastics<\/strong> \u2014 tubs and lids, butter containers, McDonald\u2019s and Dunkin Donuts clear plastic iced-coffee cups. These have a plastic identification codes 2 through 5<\/em>.<\/p>\n Bale 5: Rigid plastics<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 e.g., larger items such as laundry baskets and utility buckets. These have mixed plastic identification codes up to 7.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/div>\n Last year, Herman installed a version of Out of Sorts<\/em> at SPEEDwell Projects in Portland, where it challenged viewers with \u201can anti-aesthetic appearance,<\/a>\u201d critic Daniel Kany said in a Portland Press Herald<\/em> review.<\/p>\n It\u2019s offering that appearance at Bates, too: The five bales sit in an otherwise pretty Bates place, pieces of plastic from the bales flapping and flying away in the October breeze.<\/p>\n And as the bales did in Portland, they present at Bates \u201ca practically inexplicable oddness,\u201d in Kany’s words.<\/p>\n Perhaps odd because the bales embody a paradox. They’re about “doing the right thing by our world” by recycling, Herman says, yet so many items inside the bales, like plastic water bottles, suggest that \u201cwe\u2019ve hooked our wagon to the paradigm of convenience.”<\/p>\n Mike Adams of Bates Facility Services uses a forklift to nudge one of the five bales that comprise the installation Out of Sorts<\/em> into position outside Commons on Oct. 25. Artist Adriane Herman (left) and Dan Mills, director of the Bates College Museum of Art, guide the placement. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n As an oddity, \u201cit\u2019s definitely art,\u201d says Jake Michael \u201921, a prospective English major from Ketchum, Idaho, who stopped by the bales on Tuesday. His reasoning: \u201cIt\u2019s a representation of something designed for a specific purpose. In a way, it\u2019s aesthetically appealing, the way they\u2019re lined up.\u201d<\/p>\n Herman says the quip \u201cIs it art yet?\u201d was made in fun but is still worth addressing. For one, the bales, measuring 5 feet by 4 feet by 3 feet, weren\u2019t even created by an artist (though in terms of what defines art, that’s not a dealbreaker, considering Marcel Duchamp and his Readymades<\/a>). And, she says, \u201cI\u2019m not necessarily invested in them being called art.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy intention is to pluck these things from \u2018the unseen\u2019 and to boomerang them back.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Instead, she explains, her creative act is in \u201cborrowing them and recontextualizing them.\u201d That is, removing them from a recycling facility tucked away in an industrial park and plopping them down in a highly public space at a liberal arts campus.<\/p>\n \u201cContext and intention are very important,\u201d she says. \u201cMy intention is to pluck these things from \u2018the unseen\u2019 and to boomerang them back. It\u2019s like finding gum on your shoe, which this stuff really is.\u201d<\/p>\n Maine artist Adriane Herman inspects the bales of plastic recyclables before they were placed into position on the lawn outside Commons. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n And some of that gum could be our own. Since Casella handles Bates recyclables, \u201csome of what\u2019s in the Bales may be making a return trip to campus,\u201d says Dan Mills, director of the Museum of Art.<\/p>\n After seeing a few photos of the bales on the Bates Instagram feed,<\/a> Nahida Moradi ’22 of New York City says that context matters in another way: distance.<\/p>\n “It stood out to me: the photo of guy with a skateboard, really up close, looked cool.” From another perspective, the top floor of Roger Williams Hall, “it just looked like blocks of plastics gathered together. It didn’t seem that cool, from far away.”<\/p>\n The blocks also make her think, in a hopeful way, of the building in Taiwan that was created from PET plastic bottles<\/a>. “It’s a good way of putting to use what’s been wasted.”<\/p>\n A skateboarder flies past the bales of plastics before they were placed into position. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n The bales have thus become objects of contemplation by an audience, Herman says. \u201cSo I think they fulfill that role of art \u2014 to make people think about things, and to activate people around what they\u2019re consuming and disposing.\u201d<\/p>\n As Jake Michael got closer to the bales and saw the twisted and contorted items smashed inside, he also thought about context. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about how I view these things differently when they\u2019re not<\/em> bundled together in a heap of trash \u2014 and it makes me think they\u2019re kind of disgusting now.<\/p>\n \u201cYet we created them and we don\u2019t think ‘disgusting’ when they’re not<\/em> bundled together, when we don\u2019t see this product. In that respect, I would say that it is art, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n Seen from the top floor of Roger Williams Hall, the bales are placed onto the lawn in front of Commons. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College).<\/p><\/div>\n As\u00a0Austin Dumont \u201921, an aspiring politics major from Auburn, Maine, considered the bales, he thought about privilege: Who gets to recycle? Who gets to have the knowledge about recycling?<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of the disparities in knowledge about these things, some communities may have recycling, and some may not,\u201d he said. \u201cIt might depend on where you live, your ZIP code \u2014 and some of that might have to do with income.\u201d<\/p>\n At Bates, earnest efforts by the college\u2019s sustainability team<\/a>, including Dining Services, has increased the percentage of waste diverted from landfills to 45 percent.<\/p>\n Improving the diversion rate can pay dividends: Bates pays between $60 and $80 per ton for trash that goes to a landfill, and typically about half that for out-going recyclables, though the volatility of the market in the last year<\/a> has meant that Bates has paid as low as $7 per ton and as high as $107 per ton in the last year.<\/p>\n The Casella facility in Lewiston takes in recyclables \u2014 cardboard, paper, plastic, metal, and glass \u2014 from Bates as well as cities and towns around Maine and New Hampshire, processing up to 22 tons of material each hour and selling the baled results to manufacturers to create new products.<\/p>\n (More context: The route to the facility from campus takes you past Casella\u2019s neighbor: a massive Walmart distribution center, one of only two in New England. You can\u2019t help but think: Stuff heads out one door at Walmart and, eventually, in the other door at Casella.)<\/p>\n\n\t+<\/span>What's in the Five Bales?<\/a>\n\t<\/h5>
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