{"id":12173,"date":"2024-09-01T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-01T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/us\/?p=12173"},"modified":"2024-09-03T14:17:30","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T21:17:30","slug":"irrelevancy-as-fuel-to-generate-collective-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/irrelevancy-as-fuel-to-generate-collective-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Von Wong: Irrelevancy as fuel to generate collective action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>In this inspirational talk, artist and activist&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vonwong.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Benjamin Von Wong<\/a>&nbsp;shares how our fear of irrelevance might be the greatest tool at our disposal to combat big global issues. Watch the video below, and read on for a summary and extension of what he discussed&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/tedxboston.com\/speakers\/benjamin-von-wong\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">during TEDxBoston<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Irrelevancy as fuel to generate collective action | Benjamin Von Wong | TEDxBoston\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tJFHqLaeyGU?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When people look at my work for the first time they\u2019re kind of confused. Most think it\u2019s a painting, or something that\u2019s been computer-generated. But if you look really closely at the little lines that make up the parting of the plastic sea [in the first image below, \u201cThe Parting of the Plastic Sea\u201d], you\u2019ll notice that each and every one of those represent a single-use plastic straw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What you don\u2019t see is the work that went into building this art installation. 168,000 plastic straws were collected over the course of nine months with the help of hundreds of volunteers that we then had to collect, sort, clean, organize and convert into this Guinness-record art installation, all to show how small little individual actions can really add up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what you really don\u2019t see is the person behind the art. Not \u201cVon Wong the artist,\u201d but \u201cBen the human being,\u201d and the part of me that drives all of this creativity. It\u2019s a part of me that I think we all have inside of us to some extent, but one that I think is probably a superpower \u2014 the thing that drives my creativity is actually fear. It\u2019s a deep fear of irrelevancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Does what we do matter?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I spent my early professional years behind a camera, a tool that gave me the freedom to talk to people I never would have talked to before, go places I never would have gone otherwise, and create things straight out of my mind\u2019s eye that never existed. For a brief period, I felt like I had a voice and felt that what I did mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After some early successes, I thought I\u2019d found a formula that worked to get my work seen: simply come up with a great catchy title. For a while, the work I was creating felt fun and exciting, but over time, I realized that there was a different kind of relevancy that was important: the projects I\u2019d been creating had a utility to them \u2013 they were fun and pushed me to explore a completely different side myself and find out what was truly unique about me. But something was missing. They were missing relevancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wanted to explore what it would mean to create work that was truly relevant; work that mattered. I realized that all the successes I had were not necessarily due to my art, but rather that I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right skill set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All the projects I had created during this time had catchy headlines, and I soon realized that I had been riding the trend of clickbait. But trends change, and the clickbait trend has morphed into the trend of the influencer, the Instagrammer, where it\u2019s not necessarily about creating things that are unique and different, but instead creating things that are kind of the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Same, but different<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This new \u2018entertainment\u2019 trend generates more clicks and engagement than art. Entertainment is like junk food. You can eat it all day long, but it doesn\u2019t nourish your soul or body. It makes you a little worse off. Art, on the other hand, is slightly uncomfortable \u2013 it challenges the way you see the world and changes your perspective a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I began asking myself what would make my work relevant. I made a deliberate choice to go against what was popular and started to create work that addressed real-world issues, like the environmental impacts of fast fashion, plastics in our clothing material, and eWaste in the electronics industry. Here are a few of my latest projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Parting of the Plastic Sea: An installation made from 168,000 used plastic straws<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/plastic-sea.jpg\" alt=\"Parting of plastic sea Ben Von Wong\" class=\"wp-image-810476\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/plastic-sea.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/plastic-sea-980x551.jpg 980w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/plastic-sea-480x270.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s just one straw,\u201d said 8 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For this project, I wanted to encourage people to turn down their next straw by creating a \u201cstrawpocalypse\u201d \u2014 something so large that if anybody walked by, they&nbsp;<em>couldn\u2019t<\/em>&nbsp;ignore it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/zwsaigon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Zero Waste Saigon<\/a>&nbsp;stepped in and offered to help, and along with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.starbucks.vn\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Starbucks Vietnam<\/a>&nbsp;and hundreds of volunteers, spent over six months gathering a total of 168,000 straws to bring this project to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The result was a 10+ feet tall art installation representing the Parting of the Plastic Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here\u2019s a video about the project and its construction:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"The Last Straw - ft. Steve Connell and The #Strawpocalypse\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2AM3x8z9xjE?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Turn Off The Plastic Tap: A three-story art installation of a giant faucet spewing plastics all over the environment.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"629\" src=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/image03.jpg\" alt=\"Turn off the plastic tap Ben Von Wong\" class=\"wp-image-810478\" title=\"Turn off the plastic tap Ben Von Wong\" srcset=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/image03.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/image03-980x602.jpg 980w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/image03-480x295.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To build this 30-foot-tall installation, I enlisted the help of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.humanneedsproject.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Human Needs Project (HNP)<\/a>, a Kenyan NGO providing essential services and opportunities to people living in some of the harshest conditions in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The build-out of the installation provided temporary jobs for over 100 residents from the slums of Kibera, an underserved community the size of Central Park with 1.2 million residents located just 10 miles from the United Nations headquarters. Plastics were sourced from the informal waste sector, sanitized, and tied together before being brought to the pristine fields of the United Nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The World's Largest Closet<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/DSC05294.jpg\" alt=\"World&#039;s Largest Closet Ben Von Wong\" class=\"wp-image-810479\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/DSC05294.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/DSC05294-980x551.jpg 980w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2022\/10\/DSC05294-480x270.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every second, the equivalent of one truckload of clothing goes to landfill around the world, a fact that often goes unnoticed and ignored. That number can feel unimaginable. Although clothing is part of our everyday lives, the bulk of what we own lies hidden in a space that never sees the light of day: our closets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The number of new clothes we each buy over our lifetime varies greatly on so many factors including geographic region, gender, socioeconomics, and wealth. But we roughly estimated that the average person in the developed world will go through 3,000 items of clothing over the course of their lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Telling people to \u201cnot buy more stuff\u201d is a relatively impossible mission \u2014 after all, there\u2019s a $550 billion industry telling us to do the opposite. What if we could transform this number into a simple tangible experience: The tallest closet in the world!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The 9m tall immersive installation was created entirely with recycled aluminum, steel, and wood, and housed around 3,000 items of donated clothing. In less than five days, the entire structure was assembled at the Mall of Arabia in Cairo by an incredible team of volunteers and CanEX Aluminum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With a vision of building a tangible representation of our personal clothing consumption, the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.clothingtheloop.org\/the-project-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tallest Closet in the World<\/a>\u201d encourages the public to take small steps toward reducing the amount of clothing that ends up in a landfill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns are-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:20%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2023\/06\/Untitled-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-810480\" style=\"object-fit:cover\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2023\/06\/Untitled-2.jpg 300w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2023\/06\/Untitled-2-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2023\/06\/Untitled-2-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:80%\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About the artist<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vonwong.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Benjamin Von Wong<\/a>\u2018s work lies at the intersection of fantasy and photography and combines everyday objects with shocking statistics. He focuses on causes like ocean plastics, electronic waste, and fashion pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He is also the co-founder of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/activism.studio\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Activism.Studio<\/a>\u00a0and a creative advisor for the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/opln.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ocean Plastic Leadership Network<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.soalliance.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sustainable Ocean Alliance<\/a>. Follow his work on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/benvonwong\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thevonwong\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/vonwong\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">YouTube<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/vonwong\/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this inspirational talk, artist and activist\u00a0Benjamin Von Wong\u00a0shares how our fear of irrelevance might be the greatest tool at our disposal to combat big global issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":810473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2318,2552,2336],"tags":[127],"class_list":["post-12173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-inspiration","category-learn-photo-editing","category-photography","tag-ben-von-wong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}