Pam Longobardi | Georgia State University (original) (raw)
Pam Longobardi’s parents, an ocean lifeguard and the Delaware state diving champion, connected her from an early age to the ocean. After discovering mountains of plastic on remote Hawaiian shores in 2006, she founded the Drifters Project, centralizing the artist as culture worker/activist/researcher. Now a global collaborative entity, Drifters Project has removed tens of thousands of pounds of material from the natural environment and re-situated it in social space. Winner of the prestigious Hudgens Prize and Regent’s Professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Longobardi has been featured in National Geographic, SIERRA magazine, the Weather Channel and in exhibitions in galleries, museums and public spaces around the world. As Oceanic Society’s Artist-In-Nature, she co-leads expeditions to remote and beautiful places, working with participants and communities in addressing plastic and its environmental impact. Longobardi’s artistic output ranges from large scale sculptures to photographs, installations, large copper paintings, collages and works on paper, shown across the U.S and in Greece, Italy, Monaco, Germany, Finland, Slovakia, China, Japan, Spain, Belgium, Poland and the UK. The work provides a visual statement about the engine of global consumption and the vast amounts of plastic objects and their impact on the world’s most remote places and its creatures. Longobardi’s work is framed within a conversation about globalism and conservation.
less
Uploads
Papers by Pam Longobardi
Ocean Gleaning, 2022
My dad, a former ocean instructor, had gotten love with the crashing lifeguard and swimming of me... more My dad, a former ocean instructor, had gotten love with the crashing lifeguard and swimming of me was submerged extending a marvelous sight: all the barnacles on the piling had begun to feed, their beautiful feathery filaments to us early waves of on to fall in the shore break bodies in the and the salty suspension of our wave in the water catching microscopic plankton. brine. My family was vacationing, as we did every summer, on the Jersey at the time, my brother Jeff Jill just three years old. shore. I was eight was six and sister This sight was such a wonder that for several moments, and in doing relaxed, and the next wave pushed
The trashing of the planet by plastic pollution has finally started to make it to mainstream news... more The trashing of the planet by plastic pollution has finally started to make it to mainstream news outlets. This year (2016) brings the World Economic Forum projection that by 2050 there will be more plastic by weight in the world's oceans than fish. It brings further news that trillions of plastic microbeads from toothpaste and facial and body washes have entered our waterways and our food stream. More citizens now recognize the existence of the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, described colorfully if erroneously as a "plastic island" the size of Texas. 1 Such news stories fuel awareness of the toxic impacts of plastic pollution
Valeurs Humaines / Human Values , 2019
Framing the Ocean: 1700 to the Present . Envisaging the Ocean as Social Space, 2014
The cave is enormous, an upward sloping bowl-shaped amphitheatre. Once passing the rocky water en... more The cave is enormous, an upward sloping bowl-shaped amphitheatre. Once passing the rocky water entrance, one enters a boulder field that stretches back one hundred and fifty feet or more. The first large object one sees is a completely rusted fifty-gallon drum forty feet from the water's edge. But it's the fringe of visible objects at the far back of the cave that are of concern, more secretive in the further reaches of the far cave wall. These objects huddle together, hiding in plain view: the thousands of pieces of plastic, comprised of Styrofoam chunks and balls shaped by the sea, water bottles, shoes, five gallon multicoloured chemical containers, a second fifty-gallon drum and other oddities. Just a handful of steps in from the waves crashing on the rocks, you notice that the strewn boulders and rocks are covered with a thick layer of ochre dust, in some places up to six inches deep. This dust is dry to the bone and extremely fine; its presence is mysterious when you consider that the furious storms of winter had waves large and powerful enough to send fifty-gallon drums hundreds of feet uphill to the back of the cave. As you scramble over the rocks, you notice that not all things are rocks at all, the masking effect of the uniform dust layer hides myriad other plastic objects and Styrofoam shapes strewn across the entire floor of the cave. As soon as you dislodge a hidden object, the dust falls away to reveal gleaming white Styrofoam or the garish party colours of plastic detritus.
Ocean Gleaning, 2022
My dad, a former ocean instructor, had gotten love with the crashing lifeguard and swimming of me... more My dad, a former ocean instructor, had gotten love with the crashing lifeguard and swimming of me was submerged extending a marvelous sight: all the barnacles on the piling had begun to feed, their beautiful feathery filaments to us early waves of on to fall in the shore break bodies in the and the salty suspension of our wave in the water catching microscopic plankton. brine. My family was vacationing, as we did every summer, on the Jersey at the time, my brother Jeff Jill just three years old. shore. I was eight was six and sister This sight was such a wonder that for several moments, and in doing relaxed, and the next wave pushed
The trashing of the planet by plastic pollution has finally started to make it to mainstream news... more The trashing of the planet by plastic pollution has finally started to make it to mainstream news outlets. This year (2016) brings the World Economic Forum projection that by 2050 there will be more plastic by weight in the world's oceans than fish. It brings further news that trillions of plastic microbeads from toothpaste and facial and body washes have entered our waterways and our food stream. More citizens now recognize the existence of the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, described colorfully if erroneously as a "plastic island" the size of Texas. 1 Such news stories fuel awareness of the toxic impacts of plastic pollution
Valeurs Humaines / Human Values , 2019
Framing the Ocean: 1700 to the Present . Envisaging the Ocean as Social Space, 2014
The cave is enormous, an upward sloping bowl-shaped amphitheatre. Once passing the rocky water en... more The cave is enormous, an upward sloping bowl-shaped amphitheatre. Once passing the rocky water entrance, one enters a boulder field that stretches back one hundred and fifty feet or more. The first large object one sees is a completely rusted fifty-gallon drum forty feet from the water's edge. But it's the fringe of visible objects at the far back of the cave that are of concern, more secretive in the further reaches of the far cave wall. These objects huddle together, hiding in plain view: the thousands of pieces of plastic, comprised of Styrofoam chunks and balls shaped by the sea, water bottles, shoes, five gallon multicoloured chemical containers, a second fifty-gallon drum and other oddities. Just a handful of steps in from the waves crashing on the rocks, you notice that the strewn boulders and rocks are covered with a thick layer of ochre dust, in some places up to six inches deep. This dust is dry to the bone and extremely fine; its presence is mysterious when you consider that the furious storms of winter had waves large and powerful enough to send fifty-gallon drums hundreds of feet uphill to the back of the cave. As you scramble over the rocks, you notice that not all things are rocks at all, the masking effect of the uniform dust layer hides myriad other plastic objects and Styrofoam shapes strewn across the entire floor of the cave. As soon as you dislodge a hidden object, the dust falls away to reveal gleaming white Styrofoam or the garish party colours of plastic detritus.