Contextual portfolio

Running the numbers

Plastic Bags, 2007     60x72"

Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

Cell Phones, 2007     60x100

Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.

Chris Jordan an artist whose work explores the phenomenon of American consumerism. He takes beautiful photographs of such things because that will be breathtaking and may disgust you.

The interviewer asked Jordan about his work ‘So, statistics became a way of grounding your message more deeply?' Jordan gave him his answer 'I realized one way I could do that is to show the actual quantities of things, rather than just big piles of them. The thing about that is, there’s nowhere you can go and see these actual groups of things. It’s like our entire consumer society is happening invisibly, in some ways. So, the only way we know about the staggering effects we’re having on our environment, for example, is to read scientific reports about statistics, but there’s no where you can actually go and see the numbers. The only way we have of relating to these incredibly important facts about our mass consumption is statistics. And the problem with statistics is they’re so dry and emotionless. If we’re going to be motivated as a culture to change our behavior, then we’re going to have to find a deep motivation. Because statistics are so hard to connect with, we’re not going to find motivation from them’.

Jordan photographs caused many to take a step back and think about our lives, the enormous number implying amount there is in the photograph can certainly cause a shock to some. It feels like he is reaching out to people who actually genuinely concerned about our environment, but do not know much detail about it. Jordan likes to keep reports of large scale consumption and waste and places them in blankly in front of the viewers' faces. He did a series of work under ‘Running he Numbers: An American self-portrait’ done in 2006 to present. He made a work relating to this called ‘Cell phones’ on 2007, it is 60x100 in height and width. This self-portrait depicts 42600 mobile phones which are equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day. I do not think that Jordan work has to look anyway such way appealing to the viewer’s eyes, it is the message he gets across. All you can see is grain from a far, unless you got closer you can see what it really is.

Chris Jordan’s used statistics for a way to ground his message more deeply, what other ways may I make it possible to ground my message deeply to whoever finds my work in outer space. I want them to know the irony in technology, technology was supposed to be one of the best things humans ever made, although it has been one of them, it's also been one the worst things that were made by humans, it was supposed to connect us humans closer however why does it feel like it has made us farther apart? Oh the irony.