Plastic Video Diary, Barcelona

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

Abstract

An experimental film made with a mobile phone in Barcelona over nine days, between 18 July and 1 August 2024, using the camera as a way to become more aware of the presence and actions of plastic in everyday life. The diary began as a contribution to the Remote Participatory Video Lab: Tracing Plastic Materiality in EASA2024, and continued after the conference. It observes plastics as encountered in the city, including a ‘sterilised’ toilet seat and a lined bin, rubble sacks, toys new and discarded, motorcycle helmets, the ubiquitous plastic containers and single-use plastics, a dog chewing a plastic bottle, the sound of skateboard wheels, an artist working with aerosol paint, the charred remains of a scooter tyre, cigarette butts and works made of polyethylene by the artist Gerard Fernández Rico – all synthetic polymers. Observation lingers on these self-evident forms and their part in hygiene, play, protection, making, buying, discarding and ‘recycling’. Plastics are met through the sensing body and the diary is an attempt to reflect on the observer’s own role in relation to plastics. Research context: The video diary is part of research about plastics and a multimodal approach to studying modern materiality and the synthetically altered conditions of life. It forms a contribution to A Remote Participatory Video Lab: Tracing Plastic Materiality, convened at EASA2024 (Doing and Undoing with Anthropology, Barcelona, 23–26 July 2024; lab L020, 26 July). It follows the video-diary method set out in the Guide for the lab (EASA2024), in which the act of filming, rather than the recording, is a way of noticing and sensing plastics and the micro- and nanoplastics that cannot be easily seen. The diary is an experiment in sensory ethnography (Pink, 2009; Stoller, 1989) carried out in a low-tech, daily format using one mobile phone, no script and no staging of subjects. The intentional use of a camera to observe plastics changes the observer, making them more aware of synthetic polymers at different scales, from the object in hand to infrastructure and the particles and potential toxicities that cannot be seen (cf. Shapiro, 2015). Sound is treated as an equal witness. Plastics are both mundane and interlaced through everything in modern materiality (Gabrys, Hawkins, & Michael, 2013; Pathak & Nichter, 2019), and grasping this condition calls for a multimodal approach, alongside archaeology's attention to plastics (Godin, Pétursdóttir, Praet, & Schofield, 2024) and the study of pollution as a relation of power (Liboiron, 2021). The participatory video lab accompanied the author’s paper ‘Scattered showers of plastic and sensing toxicity’ at EASA2024 in the panel ‘Doing and undoing air, fire, soil, and water: the elementary politics and practices of clean and toxic arrangements’ (P057, 25 July 2024). Part of a series of plastic video diaries and Tracing Plastic Materiality. A related work is Plastic Video Diary, Venice (2026), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22690282. Ethics and third-party content: Filmed in public spaces in Barcelona. No individuals are identified, and where visible, effort has been made to show passers-by at a distance or from behind, without faces or blurred. An artist at work is shown by hands only. Two artworks appear in part only, are credited on screen, and remain copyright of the artist: Gerard Fernández Rico, Polyethylene //02 (2014) and Metallized Biaxially-oriented Polyethylene Terephthalate //01, Can Framis Museum, Fundació Vila Casas, Barcelona. Street art and painted murals appear as encountered in the public realm. The licence registered applies to the film as the author’s work and not to works depicted in it. Method and structure: Hand-held iPhone XR and iPhone SE (2nd generation) video footage recorded on location. No audible narration used and no subjects were staged. Video clips are kept in the order of the days experienced. Nine dated chapters on days between 18 July and 1 August 2024 are separated by fades to black. The film is presented in the phone’s portrait format (9:16). The ambient sound is part of the footage, with some passages edited to silent. Includes opening title, date captions and closing credits. Format: A viewing video file is available (10 min 18 s, 768 MB, MP4, H.264, 1080×1920, 25 fps, AAC stereo 192 kbps 48 kHz). The video is in its original portrait format and is best viewed on a phone or a rotated display, with sound. Licence and citation: Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 for the film Plastic Video Diary, Barcelona. The artworks depicted remain copyright of the artist. Suggested citation: Simpson, I. R. (2026). Plastic Video Diary, Barcelona [Video]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22690151 References: Gabrys, J., Hawkins, G., & Michael, M. (Eds.). (2013). Accumulation: the material politics of plastic. London: Routledge. Godin, G., Pétursdóttir, Þ., Praet, E., & Schofield, J. (Eds.). (2024). The Routledge handbook of archaeology and plastics. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Liboiron, M. (2021). Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pathak, G., & Nichter, M. (2019). The Anthropology of Plastics: An Agenda for Local Studies of a Global Matter of Concern. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 33(3), 307-326. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12514 Pink, S. (2009). Doing sensory ethnography. London: SAGE. Shapiro, N. E. (2015). Attuning to the chemosphere: domestic formaldehyde, bodily reasoning, and the chemical sublime. Cultural Anthropology, 30(3), 368-393. Stoller, P. (1989). The taste of ethnographic things: the senses in anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Authors 1

1. Ian R. Simpson corresponding Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University