 | Making the Invisible Visible | Feb 26, 2009 |
The INVISIBLE institute is the second intervention in responsible design by artist and environmentalist Ann Wizer.
She first established XSProject Foundation (www.xsprojectgroup.com) in 2002 in Indonesia, which transforms tons of plastic waste into consumer products that sells internationally.
The INVISIBLE Institute shares the same goal of using design and education to protect the environment and reduce poverty. It is a member-run cooperative -- managed by the women themselves -- that works with existing NGOs and other willing groups.
It trains mothers and grandmothers tied to the home -- who have little income and limited opportunities -- to crochet or hand spin plastic bags, computer wires, old CDs, metal gut from appliances and other trash/scraps into: bags, baskets, slippers, hammocks, clothing, and other home and accessory products.
It enlivens the nearly lost hand art of crochet and teaches new ways to see -- that waste is useful, once we have the confidence to work it with our own two hands.
It aims to create high-value, one of a kind, hand crafted goods that rival new products.
The INVISIBLE Institute requests donations of useful, waste materials from factories and workshops for the women’s use. It collaborates with artists and professionals in the creative industries, from fashion to product design. It welcomes financial support for administration so that the revenue from product sales goes to the creator.
This responsible design project reduces waste in the environment and creates confidence and income possibilities.
Inquiries can be directed to invisible.institute@yahoo.com.
Link
MAKATI CITY, Philippines--Who knew that factory waste and plastic can generate income and extract the creative juices of ordinary people like Virgie Buencochillo and Rene Sison? Founder of Invisible Institute Ann Wizer did. By collaborating with NGO Gems Heart, Wizer originally hoped to offer women creative ways to generate income and empower themselves. After 10 weeks, the institute grew and transformed into an organization that utilizes the creativity of both men and women in creating everything from stylish bags to sandals by crocheting waste materials such as plastic bags, lighters, unused and rejected syringes. Click the link for video interviews conducted by INQUIRER.net multimedia reporter Izah Morales. Royalty-free music courtesy of Kevin MacLeod.
By Audrey Carpio / Rogue Magazine For over a decade, visual artist and environmental activist Ann Wizer has been collecting Asia’s trash and turning it into art. Her latest ventures—the XSProject and the Invisible Institute—put Filipinos and Indonesians to work as they transform environmental waste into marketable accessories.
 The climes, they are a-changing. In our post-consumer society, sustainability is the new black, and green is the new white—many products of dubious ecological provenance get greenwashed with a patina of earth-friendliness to lure the mildly concerned shopper. Filipinos, however, have been into the lifestyle way before Heidi Klum de-hippified the Birkenstock. Sustainable diapers? We reuse rags. Sustainable cleaning products? Break out the coconut shell. Sustainable transportation? Wooden scooters will get you there! The marketplace is a limitless area where the war against climate change is being waged, and ironically we are encouraged to buy more products, albeit better ones, like organic bamboo sweatshirts and electric cars, to combat the problem created by excessive consumerism in the first place. When we get swept away in the torrent of overriding information and contradictory messages, we need to look to art to reach some kind of critical distance, to find a lens through which to assess the world. Art is charged with the noble duty to question and challenge, and artists have the responsibility to make the statements that need to be made. But what if art can become a transformative process that comments and contributes at the same time? Wizer sees the work-in-progress crocheted quilt as a trampoline that lifts the women up; I see it also as a flag that they can raise against poverty, against the tiny percentage of the world who use up the majority of its resources, against invisibility and the act of not seeing.
Ann Wizer walks through the corroded landscape of landfills and sees a palimpsest of the global economy. Trash is impervious to shifts in modes of production and the virtualization of currency—trash collects, grows, accumulates, and evolves into a built environment of its own. Wizer, a visual artist/environmental activist, has been living in Asia since the early 90s, using found objects from nature and industry in her works. She eventually came to use just garbage in her creations, because “there is so much of it.” In Jakarta, she collaborated with the trash-pickers, a sort of caste of untouchables who survive solely on scavenging. She paid them to wash, dry, clean, and cut up garbage, and taught them how to work the materials into shoulder bags and other saleable products in a venture called XSProject. In a recent exhibit at the Galleria Duemila in Pasay City, Wizer mounted refuse-upholstered furniture pieces with exaggerated proportions, an indictment on corporate social irresponsibility, where companies and governments refuse to deal with the waste they lay. Stuffed with colorful, shiny strips of plastic from toothpaste tubes and other discards and cut entirely by scissor, the chairs contain the shredded and damning evidence of a profligate corporate culture. It makes you think twice about picking up a Zesto—juice packaging, made from layers of metal, paper and plastic, is unrecyclable. Inevitably, the very same companies who denied Wizer any help when she was developing the project turned around and reappropriated the ideas, and used recycled bags as corporate giveaways. “They seem to see XSProject concepts only as promotional devices to increase their sales,” Wizer says. As for the chairs, they were especially made for these execs “who have built their brands, made their profits but due to selfish neglect of a larger world, they sit in their own waste. They’ve soiled their nests.”  In the adjacent room, Wizer displays the results of a sustainable cooperative she recently established in Manila. An offshoot of the XSProject, the Invisible Institute uses the strangely innate skill of crocheting among Filipina women (even I have turned out a few beer cozies once in my life) and develops it to produce bags, baskets, hammocks, slippers, and anything else that can be crocheted from plastic bags, factory scraps, and yes, even computer wires. The center attraction is the large spider web tent that was still being weaved at the edges by two women from the community. Clutching a skein of plastic-bag yarn and a crochet hook, they added links and chains, loops and knots, growing a little patch of their own in this rhizomatic mapping of salvaged territories. Embedded in the matrix are disposable lighters, CDs, circuit boards, and other detritus of our throwaway culture. With this new/old craft, the unseen and ignored community of urban poor mothers and grandmothers are given tools with which they can earn a living, and they in turn train other women in the arts of turning trash into flash. The concept is neither new nor revolutionary, but its simplicity is what makes it all the more powerful. Wizer sees the work-in-progress crocheted quilt as a trampoline that lifts the women up; I see it also as a flag that they can raise against poverty, against the tiny percentage of the world who use up the majority of its resources, against invisibility and the act of not seeing. “Every single thing we use, from a ballpoint pen to the most complex computer is designed. Hence, waste is a design flow,” states Wizer. The dump is indeed designed into products; it is their final destination. Planned obsolescence has been an open secret among industrial designers even since the 1950s, and as I write this very sentence on my perfectly functional and faithful MacBook, I am already adulterously lusting for the sexy new ones that Jobs recently rolled out, mentally condemning my present one to the technological purgatory where chunky beige components and pre-WiFi laptops go to short circuit. (As a slightly related side note, I have somehow owned all versions of Mac laptops starting from the PowerBook G3. I would have a veritable museum of Apple computers by now—a Macsoleum, if each had not all conked out in one way or another—now what does that say about the power of planned and perceived obsolescence?) So yes, I am contributing to the great toxic landfill in the sky, but until there are responsible methods for techno trash disposal, we at least know that when we buy a Tetra-Pak tote, a chandelier constructed out of water bottle parts, or the latest fashions woven from Ethernet cables, we are reclaiming some of what we have put out in the world, and are taking responsibility for a system that perpetuates more inequality as it produces more unnecessary things. Most of all, we reverse the design flow and reintegrate people into the equation. Now if we can only recycle into art all the incalculable garbage online—spam, hate blogs, spurious Wikipedia entries, and Facebook pictures you can untag but can’t make disappear—we can clean up our mental environment as well.
By Rina Jimenez-David
Columnist
Philippine Daily Inquirer | | I’d written previously about the unprecedented multi-venue retrospective of paintings, drawings, sketches and even product labels by National Artist Fernando Amorsolo, called “His Art, Our Heart.” Launched late last year, the exhibit can be found in seven museums around the metropolis, both private and public, with each museum examining in detail a particular aspect of Amorsolo’s oeuvre, showcasing not just his artistry and genius but also his versatility and reach as well. Perhaps the best-known and most popular of Amorsolo’s paintings are those of women. These paintings have etched themselves in the popular mind for their evocation of an idyllic past in a rural Eden, the maidens’ bronze, golden skin shimmering in the sunlight. So when Petty Benitez-Johannot told me that she was conducting a guided tour through “Amorsolo’s Women: Concealed and Revealed,” at the Ayala Museum, which she curated, I jumped at the chance to learn more about Amorsolo’s art from a knowledgeable source. But it turns out that Petty has more than just scholarship to bank on in her appreciation of Amorsolo. Among the portraits on display are two of Felicing Tirona, a lawyer, women’s rights advocate and colleague of Amorsolo’s at the University of the Philippines. One shows Tirona in native dress; another—the largest and most imposing in the gallery—is of Tirona in a modern-style gown with a peacock theme, accompanied by a boceto or small oil painting created as a study for the bigger work. Petty happens to be a niece of Tirona, and, according to her sister Lyka, who was part of the tour group, was named after their formidable aunt. The tour through Amorsolo’s world of women was thus informed by intimate knowledge (gleaned through personal experience and interviews with members of Amorsolo’s family) as much as by a social background that allowed for a full appreciation of the artist’s place in Philippine history. It was really difficult, for instance, to fully convey to the foreigners in our group just how significant Amorsolo’s works were in the formation of our own Filipino identity and aesthetic. And that perhaps is one of the best gifts to take away from an exhibit: a greater appreciation not just of an artist, but of the milieu that shaped him, and through his art, shaped the generations that came after. * * * THE WOMEN behind Echostore hosted a get-together with the media recently to thank them for their support. Echostore is a one-stop shop for products made by communities and disadvantaged groups as well as entrepreneurs and NGOs that are as well sustainable and organic. It was their happy task to report, said Chit Juan, Reena Francisco and Jeannie Javelosa, that after just a few months of operation, Echostore has already made a decent profit. Business was particularly brisk during the holidays, they said, with many companies requesting them to put together gift baskets filled with products sold in the store. So heavy was the demand that the inmates at the Correctional Institute for Women, commissioned to create the handmade paper-woven baskets, pleaded with them to stop taking orders “because we no longer have time to sleep!” Good business for Echostore translates in turn into bigger earnings and more exposure to the budding green businesses and social enterprise ventures, many of which try to combine the two goals of poverty alleviation and environmental protection. One such enterprise is The Invisible Institute, which is marketing products that are, to quote from its brochure, “made from trash and newly discovered creativity.” Using material like discarded plastic bags, computer wires, old CDs and the metal guts of appliances, urban poor women create items that are both useful and attractive, such as multi-colored crocheted bags of all sizes and colors. One increasingly popular product are hampers made from hard plastic rings, components of computer hard drives, I was told, held together by computer wires. The brochure says that the institute aims is “to create high-value, one-of-a-kind, handcrafted goods that rival new products,” and these quirky, useful hampers certainly live up to the hype. The Invisible Institute was founded by Ann Wizer, who describes herself as an artist/activist and environmentalist and provides training, materials and marketing to urban poor community women. Working with other NGOs, she aims to organize the women into a cooperative that they themselves will run. * * * ANOTHER line of products from Echostore that my family has taken a fancy to are inhalants. These are meant to ease breathing difficulties and calm nerves. “Breathe Easy!” was a giveaway during Echostore’s launch, and after using it a few times, my husband found it so conducive to a sound and deep sleep that he asked me to buy more for his bedside table. When we had our son’s girlfriend try it, she found it so soothing they went all the way to Serendra for her own supply. “Breathe Easy!” works through inhalation: you spray a bit on your hands, cup them in front of your nose and breathe in deeply. The vapors from a combination of Virgin Coconut Oil, Peppermint Oil, Essential Oils of Green Apples and Lemons, are both stimulating and relaxing. You can also spray it directly on insect bites and other skin irritations to get rid of the itching, we’re told. Another line called “Lyf Saver” works on the same principle as “Breathe Easy” and comes in both spray and vapor rub. Its ingredients are essential oils of peppermint, cinnamon, sandalwood, vetiver and lemon. Once applied on the skin or inhaled, it exudes a cool, energizing fragrance. The best news of all is that both products (made by two separate outfits, I think) are locally made, organic and definitely good for you! |
by Alice Guillermo for BusinessMirror It may be a moment too late for us humans to realize that our planet Earth is choking—in fact, expiring—from the sheer weight of garbage. Though it may not be immediately visible all the time, the earth is constantly being permeated with visible and invisible toxins like deadly viruses that Enter and infect our water and food and, inevitably, our lungs, hearts and kidneys, our entire bodies. In this penultimate moment, multimedia artist Ann Wizer in her exhibit Invisible at Galleria Duemila, ongoing until October 31, urges us to confront this problem and perhaps save the Earth from falling down the brink of kingdom come. 
FLOTSAM & JETSAM, recycled found materials from trash
Born in 1952 in Seattle, Washington, Wizer has had a wide and diverse training in different art traditions not only in the United States in California and New York, but also in Greece and Japan. This wide experience has strengthened her multimedia orientation, leaving her no inhibitions in working with all sorts of materials from beaux-arts media to domestic discards and industrial waste. Such a wide latitude of media has given her art an exhilarating quality, as well as wit and humor, through all odds, knowing no bounds, finding inspiration from the shape of a cloud or a scrap of paper as Picasso once said. But now in our particular context, using trash creatively becomes one of the viable solutions to attack the problem of proliferating garbage and will, at the same time, alleviate poverty in depressed communities to some extent. She has focused on the invisible—the trash scattered in the streets have become blind spots to our vision, the depressed slums beside riverways and railroad tracks that one pretends not to see. By working with women in the urban-poor communities, she wants to make these people and conditions visible as part of our social responsibility. Wizer has harnessed many art forms to show the urgency of the problem and in ways highly original and surprising in her present show. As a photographer, she shows enlarged and startling photographs, a room’s width, of landfills or garbage dumps. These scenes she has distorted and dragged across the rooms and walls, “to demonstrate how man, to the same degree, has twisted nature with our destructive, selfish tinkering.” The imagination staggers at the sight of forested mountains and hills wounded and gashed with tons and tons of sickly garbage sloshing down their slopes. In another scene by an enclosed lake, big pale cows graze, not among grass, but among the detritus of toxic waste and burnt computer debris that exude lethal fumes. But what about this most “inhumane” treatment of the cows? When consumed for food, their sickly diet from the environment will, in turn, be imbibed by the next consumers in the food chain. Wizer herself has visited computer companies and gathered other forms of waste that fall from the jaws of machines and containers, the liquid ooze that solidify into blobs of strange shapes which form part of her exhibit. In Executive Lounge, part of the exhibition area, are two pieces of furniture amazing because of their sheer size, like a standing upholstered seat around eight feet high and another seat about 10 feet long. But, no, they are not seats made for giants who can easily ensconce themselves in them, but for ordinary humans, CEOs of corporations who entertain delusions of grandeur in their privileged seat way above the throng and above environmental problems, although they must feel some tremors now with the recent market crash. Ironically, too, these “executive furniture” are stuffed with cleaned, shredded packaging waste that form designs at the back of the seats. The handcrafted quality of these seats are very high, as Wizer always emphasizes the importance of craft to be able to succeed and be competitive in the market. These pieces were created by trash-picking women in Jakarta who asked the artist to initiate an income-generating project that they could work on during the day while they picked trash at night as invisible people. Wizer has alternately lived in Indonesia and the Philippines for about two decades now. Here, like her XSProject in Jakarta, she has created the Invisible Institute, or II, which is a continuing workshop to convert plastic bags and factory waste into viable products that are the result of their creativity. The outer room displays the product of the efforts of mothers and grandmothers who are bound to the home to care for the children. With the use of the crochet hook, they have fashioned bags, clothes, caps and all kinds of accessories to brighten our lives. Truly delightful is a large net combining a myriad of crochet designs with found objects such as compact discs. Photojournalists Tammy David, Chris Sevilla, Gigie Cruz and Liz Finlayson documented the event. The net is a symbol in two ways: as a “cover” for invisible people who hide their identity, and as a window to the outside world which has all the colors of hope. But beyond the awakening of creativity is also the awakening of minds as to how the poor and the invisible can rightfully claim their place in society. *** Erratum: The sculpture exhibit of Junyee at Galleria Duemila is titled Siete Pintados, not Siete Pecados as inadvertently mentioned.
By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net YOU often see crocheted bags made of threads and yarn. But have you seen one using plastic? The Invisible Institute, a non-government organization (NGO), is now using plastics as material for their homegrown crocheted bags. “As we all know, we have many poor women who really need more income generating activities because they have so many people depending on them. What we’ve done is to take those people whom I call ‘invisible’ or ‘unseen’ and put them together with invisible waste, which I consider factory waste,” Invisible Institute founder and artist Ann Wizer said.  The group uses “clean trash and garbage bags” as materials to teach poor women to crochet.
“It’s a very simple skill. And we’re also teaching any men who are willing,” said Wizer. Crochet is a French term that literally means “hook.” It describes a “series of interlocking loops onto a chain using a slender rod with a hook at the end,” according to CrochetDoilies website. Wizer began the organization in collaboration with another non-government organization called Gems Heart, which gathered women in Malibay, Pasay in October to train every Tuesday afternoon. “In this project, I have given very little design advice because I was trying to see what they would come up with themselves first,” said Wizer.  Virgie Buencochillo and Rene Sison, two of the participants in the workshop, related how the program changed the way they eventually see plastic.
Buencochillo, for her part, said she now saves plastic bags from groceries and uses them as materials for crocheted bag. She also uses empty containers as another material. Sison admitted plastics turned into bags can generate extra income. “Sometimes, our budget is insufficient since I still have kids who are studying. That’s why I use the money that I get [from this new livelihood] when we’re short of budget,” Sison added.  So far, Sison has created bags out of scrap materials, such as rejected syringe, plastics, excess carpet. He said he has earned about P 4,000. Buencochillo has also finished some bags which has earned her a total of P 1,950.
Sison said crocheted plastic bags are very cheap to make. You don’t need a lot of capital since the materials are junk. Rejected and unused syringes, for instance, cost less than P 100. “It’s a self-empowering skill,” added Wizer who admitted that the organization still needs funding to hire more experts and staff. “The next step for the Invisible Institute is to get some design expertise. I love to see more designers and artists involved. We also need funding because we have to make this a real, legal entity and a real cooperative and later run by Filipinos so that they can feel the benefits,” explained Wizer.
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The group uses “clean trash and garbage bags” as materials to teach poor women to crochet.
Virgie Buencochillo and Rene Sison, two of the participants in the workshop, related how the program changed the way they eventually see plastic.
So far, Sison has created bags out of scrap materials, such as rejected syringe, plastics, excess carpet. He said he has earned about P 4,000. Buencochillo has also finished some bags which has earned her a total of P 1,950.