Cardboard Marks On The World
We revisit cardboard in considering how we personally engage with cardboard in the community. Outside of these moments in program what does cardboard look like in our lives?
“It comes out every Tuesday to be collected. It’s recycled.”
“it comes into my home carrying everything, food, materials, furniture.”
“It is a universal shipping material.”
“It holds my milk, my eggs, my new TV.”
We discussed the complicated, and sometimes troubling nature of cardboard. It led us to ask how we could include community in this dialogue? The constant sounds of development around us remind us that our immediate neighbourhood is changing as new pavements, building and human urban sprawl engulf us and this neighbourhood. How can a consistent material for all these human endeavours unite us in thinking and experiencing cardboard? What if we engaged families, households, businesses, developers to reflect on cardboard with us? What would this look like? How would this community engagement mark our building knowledge with cardboard in the infant room? Could we have a cardboard day? Is cardboard a communication line with the nature around us?
Be Strong
“This piece is falling apart, disintegrating in our hands as we play.” In hearing this a child purposefully picks up the piece of wet cardboard from the floor, walks to cupboard under the sink, opens the door and drops the piece into the garbage.
WAIT.
I retrieve the piece from the garbage, gather a cup and place the piece in the cup. We collect more pieces and we discuss keeping them. We sit with this moment of discomfort. I want to rethink this waste behaviour. The challenge sits in my lap and I wonder what now? I don’t want to throw it away. What can happen next with this one piece?
“It falls apart after a lot of play.”
“The water makes it fall apart.”
We discuss the different states of cardboard and why some cardboard donated to our room is more desirable than others. In discussing we realize it is the strong, tough cardboard we want because it is durable and lasts. It leaves us wondering about where this thinking comes from – why do we favour durability and strength over the delicate and aesthetic qualities of materials?
Cardboard bark?
We are rubbing the wavy surface of the cardboard against our cheeks. We gently draw our index fingers along the surface. We push down and observe its delicate nature and resiliency. Without the double encasing on either side of the wavy, inner section the cardboard becomes more flexible. It can fold, wrap and move in new ways in its new state. We engage with this change.
In discussing ways to engage community in our cardboard dialogue we physically engage with various pieces of cardboard in the room. These two pieces work together until an aesthetic memory draws me to place the cardboard over the roll. It is bark like and draws my memory to a forest walk in the fall and the texture of a tree.
