CALL FOR ARTISTS, SCIENTISTS, DESIGNERS, & WRITERS
WICKED, MONSTROUS
OPEN FOR APPLICATIONS March 1, 2025
DEADLINE June 1, 2025
GRACE PERIOD THROUGH JUNE 15
“If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.” – Pete Seeger, late American singer and social activist
The plastics industry is on track to release more greenhouse gases by 2030 than coal-fired plants in the United States. High concentrations of petrochemical facilities that manufacture plastics are situated in low-income areas and near ecologically sensitive ecozones such as wetlands and coastal areas. Microplastics are now identified in plant cellulose, our lungs, heart, and digestive system; even in our brains, breastmilk, and the placentas of unborn babies. Health impacts include neurodevelopmental and metabolic disorders, cancers, and cardiac, respiratory, and hormonal diseases. This is simply unsustainable and unacceptable.
For the 2025 ecoartspace annual call for artists, an online + print on demand book, we are seeking exisiting artworks, proposals for site-specific and speculative artworks, and writings addressing THE most impactful ecological issue of our time, plastics. Plastic production is a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry, and in almost 100 years, has become a wicked, monstrous problem.
Timeline of Plastic Production
Below are suggested topics and mediums, though not definitive.
Concerns to address:
- Microplastics
- Nanoplastics
- PFAS, PFOS
- Ocean Gyres
- Marine Life
- Food Chain
- Human Health
- Air quality
- Monstrous hybrids
- Single use plastics
- Caps
- Bags
- Medical
- Breadtags
- Plastic Production
- Straws
- Cosmetic
- Economics+Value
- Fast fashion/nylons/synthetics
- Packaging
- Recycling/Reuse
- E-Waste
- Legislative/Political engagement/Corruption
- Psychology + Perception
- Water bottles
- Water quality
- Consumption
- Food
- Extraction
- Environment Justice
- Plastic Waste
- Soil quality
- Monstrous hybrids
- Chemicals associated with plastic production (Ethylene Oxide, Polystyrene, Benzene, Formaldehyde, and Vinyl Chloride)
- Industrialized nature
Strategies:
- Community Engagements
- Proposals for New Projects (realistic or "pie in the sky")
- Speculative Futures
- Activism
- Painting
- Sculpture
- Installation
- Making the Invisible Visible
- Solutions/Remedies
- Interventions
- Corporate Engagements
- Collections
- Documentations
- Humor
- Education
- Eco-Remediation
- Partnerships with Cleam Up Orgs
Similar to last year's Soils Turn 2024 call for artists, we are seeking to create a "field guide" or directory of over 100 artists addressing plastics that curators and scientists can reach out to for exhibitions and collaborations.
All who apply are included with the caveat that if the work submitted does not clearly address plastics and is inappropriate, the jurors will reach out to communicate the problem. Please assume your work is included if you do not hear back by the fall. Artists included will hear from the jurors by early 2026 during the design phase of the book layout. A pop-up exhibition and book launch is planned for fall 2026.
Check back here for more information that will be added in the coming month including links to plastics information
Nate Hagens, The Great Simplification (6 podcasts on plastics)
The Plastics Crisis: A Health and Environmental Emergency
Shutting Off the Plastic Tap: A Global Treaty To Regulate Petrochemical Pollution
The Growing Threat of Chemical Production
How The Toxicity Crisis Could Cause the Next Economic Crash
Sperm and Our Future
Innovating the Business of Plastics
Important Plastics Organizations
Beyond Plastics - YouTube recordings (several panels/speakers)
Plastic Pollution Coalition - Youtube recordings (several panels/speakers)
In the news
UN environment programme Chemicals as Integral Part of Plastics
Perfect Union, Plastic Makers Have a Big Secret: They're Experimenting On You
Black Food Plastics, From e-waste to living space: Flame retardants contaminating household items
EDITORS
Aurora Robson
Aurora Robson is known predominantly for her innovative, meditative work intercepting the plastic waste stream. Born in Canada, Robson grew up in Hawaii then lived in New York City where she studied metal welding at Apex Technical School, earning her New York State metal welding certification. Robson then completed a double major in art history and visual art at Columbia University, graduating with high honors. Robson has developed numerous techniques for sculpting with plastic debris including fastening, weaving, sewing, threading, ultrasonic and injection welding and 3-d printing. A recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, a TED/Lincoln Re-Imagine Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, Robson is also the founding artist of Project Vortex, an international collective of artists, designers and architects innovating with plastic debris.
She currently lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and 2 daughters.
Patricia Watts
Watts is the founder of ecoartspace, conceived in Los Angeles (1997). She has curated over thirty art and ecology exhibitions, including Plastic, The New Coal (2025), Performative Ecologies (2020), Contemplating OTHER (2018), Enchantment (2016), FiberSHED (2015), Shifting Baselines (2013), MAKE:CRAFT (2010), and Hybrid Fields (2006). Since 2020, she has organized the annual ecoartspace exhibitions online with printed books, including: ecoconsciousness (2020); Embodied Forest (2021); Earthkeepers Handbook (2023); and The New Geologic Epoch (2023), and Soils Turn (2024). Watts has also produced pop-up exhibitions, including: Fragile Rainbow (2022) in Brooklyn, NY; Some Kind of Nature (2023) and As Above, So Below (2023) in Santa Fe, NM; Transmissions (2024) in Austin, TX; and There Is No Planet B (2025) in Scottsdale, AZ. Watts has conducted video interviews with over thirty ecological artists, including Bonnie Ora Sherk, Basia Irland, Mary Miss, and Mel Chin. She’s written Action Guides of replicable social practice projects including Eve Mosher's HighWaterLine and Tattfoo Tan's S.O.S.. Since 2014, Watts has edited and published fourteen exhibition catalogs and monographs, including Basia Irland, Repositories: Portable Sculptures for Waterway Journeys (April 2023).