Roskilde Festival, Denmark
Combining decade-old masonry bricks with week-old plastic bricks, the Plastiglomerate bench explores material permanence and temporality within the fleeting context of Roskilde festival.
Built within the festival's Art Zone, the solidity of the bricks and mortar sits in contrast with the fragility of the surrounding fabric tents and wooden pavilions. The bench stands out as a seemingly aged structure, despite the fact that it will be used for just one week before being dismantled and rebuilt elsewhere.
The shifting heights of the bench invite a variety of activities and interactions, revealing the bricks in different ways depending on how they're touched, seen, sat on, stood on... The circular form will be used for meetings, talks and other festival antics, with its varying levels creating a hierarchy between participants.
The project was initiated and led by artist Veronika Geiger and her research into plastiglomerates - a new type of stone found in Hawaii in 2012 that is part organic and part plastic. By reconstructing the stone with organic material and plastic, in collaboration with DTU students, Veronika explores new ways of creating landscapes. This aims to question how we relate to geological layers created by humankind, where timescales, materials and stories merge to create completely new narratives.
The bench was built with mason Casper Bojsen, and supported by Bikuben Foundation.
