Reflections on the Plastic Bag Store at MASS MoCA

a typical grocery store seafood display, but it's entirely made of plastic
Display in The Plastic Bag Store, created entirely from plastic.

Plastic is everywhere, it’s harmful to human and ecosystem health and if current trends continue, there will be more plastic in the world’s oceans than fish by 2050. Scientists and environmental advocates have raised the alarm for years but little, if anything, has changed. We clearly need different approaches to reach and educate the main users of plastics: people (plastics packaging, including bottles and containers are the biggest uses, accounting for more than 40 percent of total annual plastics consumption).

 

audience in an ingloo like room thats created from plastic bags watching a show on projector
The viewing room of The Plastic Bag Store.

Enter the immersive Plastic Bag Store exhibit at MASS MoCA. Created by Robin Frohardt, an award-winning theater and film director. My colleague, Mike Evans, and I had the opportunity this past summer to experience the public art installation and film experience created by Frohardt and it succeeded in making me both laugh and critically examine my own daily interactions with plastics. 

We were invited by Jennifer Lees, Director of Visitors Experience at MASS MoCA to view and participate in the exhibit, yes participate, because it is an immersive, multi-stage show that leads the viewer through a physical grocery store in which everything is (beautifully) made from plastic and masterfully executed puppetry that tell the nearly infinite life cycle of plastic. 

 

Designed for audiences of young middle school age and up, the exhibit stays intentionally human, it doesn’t cast blame nor does it wag a finger at how blissfully we participate in and perpetuate the plastics industry’s sales game that plastics are necessary, convenient, and somehow part of homo sapiens’ evolution (spoiler alert: the scientist of the future in the show attaches far more important meaning to much of the “ancient” plastics he discovers than they had at the time).

 

While the show is short on pointing towards solutions that would work at scale to stem the tide of plastics pollution—perhaps not surprisingly given the plastics industry’s ties to fossil fuels and their collective entrenchment in our society and economic system—it does succeed in drawing in the viewer without prejudice and holier-than-thou attitude, but rather in a playful, artistically beautiful manner that captures the audience’s attention and creates a better understanding of plastics’ two key properties: longevity and low cost, both of which contribute to making it the threat that it is. 

 

plastic produce in grocery store
Plastic produce stand with plastic produce.

If people leave the show thinking that they, too, can find ways to reduce the number of plastic bags they get at the grocery store, use their own reusable water bottles, opt for glass instead of plastic to store food, or some other way to reduce their role in the massive global plastics network and tell their friends and family about it, then I think the show has succeeded and David (us, the consumer) dealt a small but meaningful blow to Goliath (the plastics industry).

 

The Plastic Bag Store exhibit is still open at MASS MoCA through November 3 and I strongly encourage you to see it. Better yet, take a friend and/or family member! If you’re a professor/teacher, consider taking your class. Jennifer Lees will help you book a time and offer discounted tickets.

 

Tanja Srebotnjak, ZCE Executive Director