In October 2005 International Festival makes a European tour to 25 performance venues. The performance consists of an offer to each venue to receive 1000 plastic bags printed with the International Fesival logo. The offer is simple: to pass 500 plastic bags to a second venue and to use the remaining bags in the daily routine. The projects aim is on the one hand to perform the conditions for circulation and passing due the theatre venues, in particular the office, as sites of exchange (How often haven’t we found our selves with a lot of stuff not finding a plastic bag when we leave the office). On the other the plastic bag function as a open script for a potential choreography of 25.000 performers, a kind of inter European dance performed through our everyday movements. Will the carrier of the plastic bag perform him/herself differently when there can a person with a similar plastic bag in a different part of the world. A third issue is how an art work or its potentiality can be passed from person to person. This choreography will be passed on and exist until the last plastic bag is destroyed, thus visiting an amount of contexts where it might or not be understood as an artistic utterance.

“He suddenly found himself sitting on bench. He had a plastic-bag in his right hand but was otherwise naked. Nothing revealed who he was except eleven seemingly insignificant items in a worn out plastic bag”, begins Philip K. Dick’s novella “Surfacing Flash Temple“. One can think of hundreds of other examples where the plastic bag plays a central role in 20s century narratives, cultural production and globalized society in general. Plastic bags are everywhere and have become the unauthorized icon of industrial, and post-fordist society. The plastic bag is a promise of a better life in capitalist society, and simultaneously a deadly weapon – “She died with a plastic bag over her head, a long and painful death”. Plastic bags appear to override capitalism. Everybody can afford a plastic bag, even a bag lady, and only the wealthiest can obtain that plastic bag. Does it really matter what I buy as long as I can walk my Gucci plastique.
Plastic bags performs a central role in our lives, but seems to be thoroughly absent understood as performance. The project that follows is a plastic bag project and a choreography, a local situations participating in a global event, an individual action being part of a gigantic mass performance.

Every time I visit a theatre office it seems that I bring more stuff with out. Perhaps I forgot something last time, or “-Can you take some flyers…”, or a bunch of video cassettes is piled under my chin. But why are there never any plastic bags in theatres? It’s always like this: “-Oh, I don’t know but I think Marion had one here somewhere…” Why are there never any plastic bags in the theatre? Never?

In the Spring 2005 International Festival formulated a desire to make a really big performance activated by the cheapest and smallest possible implement, or score. The simple solution was to produce a large number of plastic bags printed with the logo of International Festival and to distribute them to theatres around Europe. No further instruction: use them!

Each time somebody would take a plastic bag and walk out into the world he or she would participate in a European choreography with 25.000 possible other performers. Perhaps a solo, or perhaps there are other bags activated at that precise moment in other parts of the world. A duo, a trio, an ensemble of performers turning corners, crossing streets, or hanging out in train stations with a their bags. Plastic bags being blown by the wind, used to store package a gift or thrown away together with something old, all being a kind of secret set design for the gigantic choreography International Festival. A performance which can be past from individual to individual, generation to generation without requirements, without technical abilities, where the world become the stage and the almost worthless object the plastic bag the starting point, and generator of action, with an unknown content, a carried secret, an inside and outside.

"For me the copy is the success" (Coco Chanel)
At the very beginning of the 2006 International Festival were sent a series of images. The plastic bag that in the autumn of 2005 were spread to 50 theatres in Europe and elsewhere had been redesigned. A replica of the original IF plastic bag had seen the ligth and International Festival of course praise the Lord and hope for more creative initiatives. The gossip indeed says that the film director Walter Salles after his production of On The Road are working on The Plastic Bag Diaries with Gwen Stephanie as the main character based on Vivienne Westwood.

The replica bag seem to have been issued in Sweden but it is also possible that the bag has been created in a French speaking country. International Festival will continue to investigate, and like Terry Benedict hunt these criminals to the end of the world. Long live lousy copies.

The plastic bag today (2 November 2005) reached Japan. Images from the Swedish design exhibition in Tokyo has arrived to International Festival.
The audience in Japan showed great interest for the bags and has taken strong liking to the aesthetics of International Festival.

The plastic bag is currently reaching new destinations as the tours is going on. An art centre in Portland asked for a package during an accidental meeting in Brussels, and Unfriendly Takeover has decided to send their second package to Jerusalem. Dansstationen in Malmö is sending their bags to the far east as well: Russia is the destination.

IF plastic 2005. The ultimate International Festival mix compilations for download. During the Grand European Plastic Bag Tour a great deal of music was played in the International Festival Volkswagen. Today International Festival release a m-murderous mix of a bunch of the glitter and bubbles songs that steamed the car and flooded the autostradas of Europe. This is the beginning of a new department of International Festival with releases of ballistic mixes from all over. Cry baby is a one hour long remix of the classic techno hit from 1988. IF 2006 is just a compilation of pure pleasure.

Check it out! New Updates. The download is soo for free.

Download compilation here: IF Plastic Music (mp3) (72 MB)

Download compilation here: IF Cry Baby (mp3) (86 MB)

Download compilation here: IF 2006 (mp3) (54 MB)

Download compilation here: IF 2007 (mp3) (22 MB)