JESUS FALLS THE FIRST TIME

I belatedly realised the folly of my plan to assemble a freestanding crumbling tower on site (given just two days) by using found styrofoam packaging forms, just balancing on each other or wedged together. Once again, I had overreached; this is a folly in both senses of the word, a purposeless ornamental building foolishly undertaken. The tottering tower idea rose out of my lived experience of falling, which I had often associated with the proverbial, ‘pride comes before a fall’. Despite planning the feel of falling for this work, it was only when I trialled the tower that I realised my foolishness once again, as my principles of assemblage require using foam pieces as found, no shaping (and making more harmful crumbs) and no glues, ties or armature (so all can be reused before recycling). Normally a pleasure to play with, like building a house of cards, this was a struggle.

Entirely single-use rubbish from consumer goods, the tower is fragile and unsustainable, like the growth economy that produced it. We could instead move toward a circular economy that plans to reuse all materials, a cheaper alternative with no waste that many manufacturers are adopting. With consumerism we created a monster: I like that in the end the tower required feeble props, like arms reaching out trying to break the fall, as I do; I sympathise with this personification of consumerism.