INGE PANNEELs


investigating the carbon footprint of a project




Material Journeys is a current exhibition at the National Glass Centre, Sunderland until 2nd September 2018, of new and revisited work, that considers the impact of a project in the context of the Anthropocene.




I wanted to explore the physical journey glass makes, from the factory to the studio, from the studio to the gallery... It is by no means an exact science and it did open up a rabbit hole of questions; where do you stop? However, the key part was asking the question and standing still for a minute to consider where and how materials 'live' in our midst.



This little boat set out on a journey…

its material journey

from idea

to work in progress

to final, finished work

Took many forms of energy

Of thinking power
designing, drawing, problem solving, researching

Of manual making power
shaping, forming, wiping, grinding, polishing, cleaning…

But I wanted to know the ‘other’ embodied energy; of the material journey in making this little boat

This journey took us down the rabbit hole…
of carbon footprint calculations…
as someone said…know the beginning before the end…

But this boat was on a mission and disappeared down the hole,
the sink hole, the plug hole…

Embodied energy
Embodied in the materials

Who counts?

What is emitted?

plaster and molochite (0.29 and 0.55)

wax (1.93)

silicone Rubber (31.50)

water (0.01)

sheet glass (20.17)

and granular glass (0.62)


Indirect Emissions
Energy
From materials…

melting (0.04)

steaming (3.15)

firing (259.99)


Embodied energy in materials
Moving
From one place to another

Me, moving from one place to another
Travelling
Journeywoman (46.78)

Indirect
Emissions
From materials
Moving (2.93)
Travelling
From one place to another

Who counts?
What is emitted?

Indirect
emissions
from being, somewhere, here
in a building, with lights on and heating (58.21)

So here we are…
a little boat
embodied energy
embodied material journeys…

428.62 carbon kilos

visualised

a little glass paper boat

a crashing wave…

a plug hole…


down the rabbit hole we went

428.62 carbon kilos

One tree
say it grows for twenty years
will absorb 455 kilos of carbon in its life

Or

Maybe
over nineteen trees growing
in one year
will absorb this carbon footprint

Down this plug hole
a material journey
a map barely explored

One material journey
One tree…

…know the beginning before the end…


Inge Panneels

With big thanks
To Creative Carbon Scotland for providing pointers
To Matt Jobling from the National Glass Centre for providing data
But mostly to Tom Jordan for collating the data and doing the calculations
And Kevin Greenfield for his lovely images.



I am grateful to the National Glass Centre, and the Julia Stephenson in particular for encouraging me to undertake this work and to place it in the context of ongoing PhD research.


I also delighted to accounce that the above piece, Material Journey, after which the exhibition is titled, has been purchased by the National Glass Centre for its growing, permanent collection.



I also revisited an older piece of work, Ten Green Bottles, originally made for the Green Design-Ed exhibition at the Collins Gallery in Glasgow in 2006 which showcased the work of eleven makers for the Design-Ed collective, established in 2000 of which I was part until it was disbanded in 2008 when the group members moved away away, and on from the city of Edinburgh.


Ten Green Bottles was a collection of ten recycled green wine bottles, with engraved labels, originally inspired by a visit to the Alloa glass factory (then United Glass) who produced glass jars and packaging for the packaging industry. At the time the recycling rate in the UK were too low and waste glass had to be shipped in from abroad.


This revisited version of Ten Green Bottles has delicate labels with facts and figures on the virtues of glass as a potentially infinitely recyclable and thus precious material, which has to be considered in the context of the current debate on plastic waste. Thank you also to friends and family who kindly kept and donated glass bottles....


The exhibition continues until 2nd September 2018 at the National Glass Centre, Sunderland (UK).


I suspect it has only been a first new journey into new material territory....


Inge



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