Artists João Parrinha, Luis de Dios and Xandi Kreuzeder joined forces to create Skeleton Sea. Three are ambitious surfers, working as a collective to communicate their visions of the meeting point between mother nature, sport and art. Their creations have made an excellent contribution to environmental awareness from the perspective of those who depend on nature to feed the passion for the sport. Also, they organize beach cleanups and creative workshop where the orders are to recycle and imagine.
When this project Skeleton Sea started?
John Parrinha: It all started with the addition of being an artist and surfers, ie, before I've made sculptures with the reuse of a series of materials that I found and then joined them to make works of art. Me and my surfer friends spent a lot of time on the beaches, we accumulate a lot of garbage on the coast and decided to do something. We set up this project called "skeleton sea" in 2005, which aims to collect garbage from beaches, these make a debris sorting and created art with these materials. We held workshops with extensive range people and children who want to participate and also this message is a bit of awareness of the population about the pollution and waste that exists in the oceans.
How do you organize the cleanups of the beaches? It's once a year, or is there a timetable?
JP: It depends a little bit of our programming. We had much work lately and have not had time to do many cleaning, but now we start again in October. Do not know if it will be weekly or monthly, this all happens in Ericeira, where we are based, but have done many cleanings over the world and are available to provide this type of project. We traveled with some of the pieces we do, we can do beach clean-ups and workshops, is what we are going to do now in Corunna.
A curious fact about the pieces is that not only reflect the recycling of materials, but somehow attempt to illustrate endangered marine animals.
JP: Exactly. This concern is also great, we have a tuna, for example, which was endangered by being over caught, and this is also the message we want to convey. Be aware that we are giving out all this slowly, not only with the trash, but the overfishing of certain species that may be endangered.
These actions stemming from the beaches, do you have the notion of trash collected in terms of weighing? Tons maybe?
JP: Tons is a lot, but I remember Brazil in terms of trash collected with four teams for two hours, we collected a ton and a half and it was a scary thing. I know we were in a very polluted area was an estuary of a river, had too much junk running with the current, which would stop along the beaches. For example, in a "normal" beach where we do not see at first glance a lot of garbage, with a team of 50 to 100 people for two hours, in garbage bags of 100 liters, we caught around 15 bags of debris, even so. It is too much rubbish and would not even see it much, the beach looks clean, but little by little we are picking up between the stones and the amount is huge.
But the trash, mostly is caused by man or there is also much debris that comes with the tide?
JP: It's a little of both, there is a lot of garbage that comes from the tides. A little while ago I was in Madeira, one sees very little debris on the beach, due to some cleaning, but I realize that at the edge of the tide I saw the plastic that accumulates. There was recently a very large tide, which rose because of the enormous full moon and you could see that plastic. It is a problem, hence the awareness, because birds eat this garbage thinking it is food, do not digest it and starve with a stomach full of plastic.
These workshops are also important to convey this message of environmental preservation with the younger generation?
JP: Exactly, I think it is crucial to realize this problem. And it is much easier to educate children in a natural way, which is about the reality that surrounds them. Parents also help, because they ask the children not to throw trash on the ground, so I think it is fundamental. But our project goes further than this environmental awareness, we also pass the concept of creativity, all objects that can be found used from another perspective, we can use the materials to be creative, we set up parts and this works very well the workshops, they love to be working. It is a sort of manual work and are still with these pieces that they keep forever, I think.
And have you ever notice that environmental awareness on the part of the people or not? Since your project works since 2005.
JP: I think the problem is very present, there are more institutions and groups that address this issue. There is a greater tendency for people to follow today what goes on with the planet, we're changing some minds, I think so. We had the opportunity to show a film on albatrosses, all over the world, so surely we changed something. But our world is very large and there are many unsolved problems, there are countries where the highest concern is for survival and not the environmental issues, but I think that little by little will be shaping the mentalities.
http://www.skeletonsea.com/about/message/
