For the Vilém Flusser Residency Programme for Artistic Research 2013 jury members Kristoffer Gansing, Marcel Rene Marburger and Lioudmila Voropai have selected the new resident Pinar Yoldas and her project An Ecosystem of Excess.

The project An Ecosystem of Excess by Pinar Yoldas approaches the problem of “man-made extreme environments” like landfills, junkyards etc. caused by an excessive consumerism. The aftermath of environmental pollution as a consequence of immense industrial and technological waste became an established subject of debates in the public discourse of recent years. These debates go far beyond their original arena within the left-oriented critique of capitalist consumer society. An expansion of ecologically concerned public discussions is largely reflected also in current artistic production: environmental issues became an essential part of a thematic contemporary art repertoire.

In this context An Ecosystem of Excess discovers its potential to provide more than just another contribution to the current eco-art trend. The project rather promises critical and ironic reflection upon the very possibility for an art project to explore environmental problems and to develop a certain art immanent ‘research methodology’ and analytical tools. Taking the so-called Pacific Trash Vortex – a “floating nexus of plastic waste” that covers a more than 5000 square km large area of the Pacific Ocean – as a point of departure and referring to the “primordial soup theory” on the origins of organic molecules on Earth, Pinar Yoldas anticipates life-forms, which could emerge out of this contemporary “primordial plastic ooze”. In a speculative projection that could be described as “bio-fiction” she intends to introduce a new taxonomy of “species of excess” adapted for such environments.

With regard to previous works by Pinar Yoldas such as Speculative Biologies, Scream, Shock Therapy with their humorous commentary upon the conceptual superficiality of today’s mainstream bio-art production, the Vilém Flusser Residency Programme encourages the further development of the artist’s critical approach both to the examined subjects as such as well as to the modes and forms of their examination in the artistic practice.