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Plastic bags wrap up Religion
Theres an old Chinese game for children – Chin,Chan, Chon – in German Stone, Scissors, Paper. Its about daily used things and the effect they have one one another. So the stone sharpens the scissors, the scissors cuts the paper and the paper wraps up the stone. But the picture describes the present, not a child’s game. The plastic bag has made paper packaging redundant and has become information carrier number one. With this printed advertising message the plastic bag is more patient and longlasting than paper. That`s technological developments, something like progress. New materials replace older ones just as old cultures and their symbols are replaced by new ones. This is most clearly to be seen as clothing changes. Old traditional materials are left aside to be replaced by jeans and t-shirts. This process of cultural reorientation is almost always accompanied by value changes. The old values lose their meaning and validity and become useless for personal and social living. That goes for religions and their symbols too. In the centre of the picture we recognize a decapitated statue of Buddha. It holds however, no lotus flower but a Mercedes star, the symbol of modernity, with a new world order, the consumer society. Men adore this symbol as earlier their saints. They have served enough and are swapped on markets for the symbols and new cult souvenirs sold to tourists. Trade with the tourists has become the main source of income, pushing back activities of cultivation and animal breeding. The monks have moved out of the caves hewn in the mountains and souvenirshops and small galleries have opened in which the old culture is sold out. The statues and religious pictures are placed in plastic bags and handed over to the tourists for (decent) money.