Summary of POPART objectives
Due to their remarkable properties plastics have been used as an alternative to natural products and have allowed new applications that would have never been possible before.
Plastics are today everywhere in our daily life; it is difficult to imagine a life without plastics whether it is our polyethylene carrier bags used to bring shopping home from the supermarket, poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) waterproof clothing to protect us from the weather, polycarbonate compact discs and DVDs to store our favourite music and pictures or the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) building bricks our children play with. Because plastic reflects daily life since the early 1900s and contemporary art since the 1960s, museums and galleries all over the world have growing collections of it. But any new discovery has its dark side, its weaknesses: plastics are not an exception and the downside is all about permanence.
Bertrand Lavédrine