Since 1999, Plastique Fantastique, sometimes in collaboration with creative partners, has been experimenting with temporary pneumatic structures that playfully and critically scrutinize urban and social issues. For example, in 2008 they installed an oversized inflatable yellow walk-in plant pot around a tree on a Berlin street (Karl Marx Bonsai<\/em>, 2008) and, working with sound-experience designer Lorenzo Brusci, animated the space within the pot with pulsing, vibrating sounds. Passersby who entered the installation were prompted to re-examine their everyday environments and the effects of noise pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2015, Plastique Fantastique placed an oversized lifeboat at the Scheveningen Pier to address the ongoing refugee crisis at European borders and offer the public a space for social interaction and dialogue. Inside the pneumatic structure, titled LIVEBOAT \u2013 Chapter 5<\/em>, people could listen to multilingual excerpts from Homer\u2019s Odyssey<\/em>, which functioned as a conversation starter. Through these encompassing, participatory installations, with their experimental soundscapes, visually transformative effects, and sometimes vibrant colours, Plastique Fantastique seeks to question habitual perceptual patterns and stimulate people to reimagine their relationship with the world around them. By using plastic sheeting and air as its primary media, it is following in the footsteps of 1960s and 1970s pioneers of inflatable art and design, such as the artist Graham Stevens and the collectives Haus-Rucker-Co, Archigram, Ant Farm, and Eventstructure Research Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like many of its predecessors, Plastique Fantastique creates dream-like environments, in both urban and natural settings, that appeal to the senses and invite visitors to enter into dialogue with their surroundings. The project Sound of Light <\/em>(first presented in 2014) was designed to transform sunlight into audio frequencies. A high-quality digital camera mounted on top of the inflatable structure filmed the sky and divided the input signals into three primary colours (red\/green\/blue) and three secondary colours (cyan\/magenta\/yellow), which were directed to six coloured columns that hung from the structure\u2019s ceiling. The different frequencies were then converted from visible to audible sensory input. A series of woofers were attached to each column, transforming the space into a vibrating loudspeaker. Visitors were confronted with the superimposition of colours, shapes, sounds, and vibrations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As illustrated by Sound of Light<\/em>, and described in a monograph on Plastique Fantastique (2023), the collective\u2019s work is characterized by an exploration of ambivalence and a questioning of boundaries and dichotomies. Combining digital and analog technologies, it connects different realms of perception in order to produce cross-disciplinary works. Moreover, it creates inflatables that both provide intimate, enclosing, and private spaces and interact with the public surroundings. The structures\u2019 thin, translucent, soft skins help to separate and<\/em> connect, inviting participants to explore the tensions between inside and outside, individual and society, isolation and communication. Plastique Fantastique\u2019s work also troubles the boundaries between the temporary and the permanent, by designing structures that are easily deflatable, transportable, and transformable. Regarding the latter dichotomy, the collective\u2019s use of plastic is particularly interesting, as this material invokes complex dynamics between ephemerality and permanence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the large-scale inflatable structures produced by Plastique Fantastique over the past few years have, indeed, been temporary in nature. When the presentation of a work comes to a close, the plastic structure is deflated and the artwork dissolves within a few minutes. On the occasion of the BLOOM Festival 2022 in Copenhagen, the collective inflated two bubble-like structures among the trees and nettles of the historic S\u00f8ndermarken Park. Visitors to the festival could explore the imaginary path between the two spheres as they examined polarized concepts, such as \u201chuman\u201d (represented by the structures made out of manufactured materials, and by the participants themselves) and \u201cnature\u201d (represented by the verdant surroundings). After three days, the bubbles vanished, \u201cleaving only the memory-based border in the air.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - The project was titled 70 Steps: The distance between heart and nettle<\/em>. See \u201c70 Steps,\u201d Plastique Fantastique (website), October 26, 2024, accessible online.<\/span> Plastique Fantastique\u2019s fascination with and creation of bubbles\u2014in line with those of seventeenth-century Vanitas still life painters\u2014draw attention to the ineluctable transience of things in life, including their own works. As philosopher and architectural theorist Lidia Gasperoni argues, bubbles allow for performative immediacy, modelling, habitation, and play, but they are also temporary, ephemeral spaces of dissolution.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Lidia Gasperoni, \u201cSpaces Without Roots,\u201d in Canevacci and Young, Plastique Fantastique<\/em>, 6\u20137.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Plastic, as a material, contributes to the evanescent character of Plastique Fantastique\u2019s work. Plastic itself can be a fragile and vulnerable substance, at least when it is in the form of a thin film and used for inflatables. However, as various critical thinkers have suggested, plastic is more\u2014or less\u2014than a substance, embodying ideas of both \u201cinfinite transformation\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Roland Barthes, Mythologies<\/em>, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Noonday Press, [1957] 1972), 97.<\/span> and infinite disposability.6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Gay Hawkins, \u201cPlastic and Presentism: The Time of Disposability,\u201d Journal of Contemporary Archeology<\/em> 5, no. 1 (2018): 97.<\/span> In the post-Second World War period, when thermoplastics such as polyethylene and polystyrene (which can be melted and reshaped) proliferated, plastic\u2014encompassed by and geared toward the economic imperatives of that time\u2014became classified as transient, disposable, and volatile. As scholar Heather Davis explains, at that time plastic seemed to offer a substance without ontology, precisely because of this manufactured disposability, and became synonymous with ephemerality.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Heather Davis, \u201cPlastic Geology,\u201d in Mensch macht Natur: Landschaft im Anthropoz\u00e4n \/ Humans Make Nature: Landscapes of the Anthropocene<\/em>, eds. Gabriele Mackert and Paul Petritsch In recent years, however, researchers have pointed to the other temporal dimension of plastic: its permanence. Specific types of plastic, such as thermosetting plastics, were already during the interwar period, praised for their stability and durability. In contrast to the thermoplastics that became dominant after the Second World War, thermosets, once hardened, cannot be melted for reshaping. In fact, however, all types of plastic share one characteristic: they last<\/em>. Alarmingly, as Davis writes, plastic easily disperses, breaks apart, and can be contained elsewhere, but it \u201cdoes not go away.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Davis, \u201cPlastic Geology,\u201d 224.<\/span> She emphasizes that plastic does not biodegrade; the pieces may get smaller and smaller, but they do not turn into something else. Davis refers to chemical engineer and plastics expert Anthony Andrady, who once put the lifespan of plastic at about one hundred thousand years, with worrying implications for the global environment and its human and non-human inhabitants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although awareness of environmental issues shines through in the descriptions on Plastique Fantastique\u2019s website, and the collective\u2019s work spurs people to consider the relationship between humans and nature, it does not overtly or critically reflect on the lasting impact of plastic. The group does try to reuse elements of its projects\u2014Sound of Light<\/em>, for instance, was presented in different versions and locations, and basic plastic forms, such as bubbles, are used multiple times\u2014but many components of its structures eventually become waste. The plastic that is part of Plastique Fantastique\u2019s creations will, in large or small size, continue to circulate, just as the \u201cmemories achieved through the unique experience [of its works] endure.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Canevacci and Young, Plastique Fantastique<\/em>, 8.<\/span> Thus, the collective\u2019s inflatables not only allow for a journey through a dreamy and ephemeral realm, as the subtitle of its monograph emphasizes; they also provide a link to a material and permanent reality, concretized by the plastic matter. As scholar Mark Simpson has pointed out, the time of plastic operates according to a contradictory rhythm, connecting impermanence with perpetuity, effecting both positive and negative impacts.10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Mark Simpson, \u201cPlastic in the Time of Impasse,\u201d in Plastics, Environment, Culture, and the Politics of Waste<\/em>, ed. Tatiana Konrad(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023), 339.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yena Young remarks that Plastique Fantastique\u2019s name\u2014which seems to simply celebrate plastic\u2014and its use of this manufactured material, often evokes negative associations. A little annoyed with this \u201csensitivity,\u201d she once argued, \u201cIt\u2019s air which makes inflatables, not plastic!\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Canevacci and Young, Plastique Fantastique<\/em>, 152.<\/span> As the public becomes increasingly aware of the darker sides of plastics, it is understandable that Plastique Fantastique wants to place emphasis on air as its principal medium. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that plastic also<\/em> makes inflatables. Both elements are needed to bring immersive inflatable installations and environments into being. It is important to acknowledge the role of plastic in the practice of inflatable art and design, along with its fantastic and not-so-fantastic forces and the different dimensions of time associated with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of an inflatable structure, plastic can be a great mediator in enabling play and interaction, in the here and now. It may, moreover, help to create floating protective and nomadic structures, needed during urgent crises such as flooding or a pandemic. But plastic can also have toxic effects and may endanger the health of Earth and its living creatures in the long run. When we look at the photographs of Blurry Venice<\/em>, we see how architecture, air, water, skyline, and<\/em> plastic \u201cmelt together.\u201d There is no way around it. When exploring and questioning the complex layers of our surroundings, as Plastique Fantastique urges the public to do, we should take into account the (temporal) layers of plastic and its various short-term and long-term effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Art historian Annemarie Kok works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen. Her current research focuses on ephemeral and participatory art and heritage practices. She has lectured at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, the University of Groningen, and Utrecht University.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Kok_Plastique-Fantastique_KMB_02.jpg\")
Karl Marx Bonsai<\/em>, installation view, Berlin, 2008.
Photo: Marco Canevacci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Kok_Plastique-Fantastique_Lifeboat_NL_01-scaled.jpg\")
LIVEBOAT \u2013 Chapter 5<\/em>, installation view, TodaysArt Festival, Scheveningen Pier, The Hague, 2015.
Photo: Marco Canevacci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Kok_Plastique-Fantastique_SoundofLight_05-IM-scaled.jpg\")
Sound of Light<\/em>, installation view, Hamm, 2014.
Photo: Simone Serlenga, courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Kok_Plastique-Fantastique_loudshadows_01-IM-scaled.jpg\")
Loud Shadows | Liquid Events<\/em>, installation view, Oerol Festival, Terschelling, 2017.
Photo: courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 227.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Kok_Plastique-Fantastique_SoundofLight_08-scaled.jpg\")
Sound of Light<\/em>, installation view, Hamm, 2014.
Photo: Simone Serlenga, courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Kok_Plastique-Fantastique_BlurryVenice_03-scaled.jpg\")
Blurry Venice<\/em>, installation view, Venice, 2019.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Kok_Plastique-Fantastique_BlurryVenice_09-scaled.jpg\")
Blurry Venice<\/em>, installation view, Venice, 2019.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n