Silageballenchor has evolved in response to the tide of agricultural waste residue from the plastic wrapping of silage bales with single use plastic stretch film. Schöppingen being in the heart of a vast agricultural terrain and in my home land of milk, butter, sheep and beef - New Zealand, these pale green marshmallow plastic wrapped bales that punctuate our landscape and their material dialogue with disposal and single use virgin plastics have inspired this direction in my work. The issue, like the clinging silage film, stretches far and wide on a global scale.
Photographer: Hubert Hasler
Silageballenchor seeks to re-navigate our relationship with the agricultural waste, which underscores our daily life and habits of consumption. A purposeful movement within plastic shrouds and an experimental voice worship meld together to explore a spirited channeling of light, voice and material through the site; a stone labyrinth, at the foot of the St. Bratcius bell tower. The centre of the labyrinth is marked by a Chi-Rho symbol - a sign often used to mark a particularly valuable or relevant passage, one plastic wrapped silage bale is positioned directly over it within a composition of 3 illuminated silage bales intercepting the labyrinth passage as sacred objects of ritual. In New Zealand, although there are collection and recycling systems in place where clean collected silage wrap matter is collected and shipped to Malaysia to await its reincarnation as future plastic material, you can still find used silage wrap draped along fences, thrown into rubbish holes, abandoned in paddocks and piled up in mounds awaiting illegal burning. Around 320,000 kilometres of silage wrap is used and disposed of every year in New Zealand - enough to wrap nearly 8 times around the circumference of the Earth.
Images: Brydee Rood 2017
