Description
The Orange Incident
Last summer, I spent a week in Peekskill for Plotter Fest, experimenting and sharing a passion for plotter art with the artists invited by Bre from Bantam Tools. As I was about to go through the security checkpoint at JFK airport to return to France, I hastily pulled out my liquids in a plastic bag. The security officer said, “What’s this?”, to which I replied, “Inks, sir, they’re liquids.” He answered, “We don’t check liquids. This is America here ! We don’t do that anymore.”
Surprised, under pressure (it had been a long day), I rushed to pack up my bottles, and in doing so, a bottle of that magnificent Noodler’s orange ink opened and spilled all over my bag and the conveyor belt. We artists are particular about our inks. This wasn’t a cheap ink, but the kind with ultra-saturated color, a vibrant orange, lightfast, waterproof, museum-grade++ … and it was everywhere.
A very kind woman gave me a packet of tissues to try and clean it up quickly. My hands, glowing with a shameful orange hue, bore the unmistakable imprint of guilt, a mark I wore openly as I crossed the terminal and boarded the plane.
—
Later, the orange incident gave me pause. That moment of clumsy chaos, helped along by a mischievous twist of fate, had unfolded in a time of stress, in the middle of a crowd, and yet it felt laden with symbolism I couldn’t resist trying to decipher.
What did it say about me ? Someone who used to care deeply about the environment, and yet whose carbon footprint had exploded ever since he began showing his art around the world? I, a foreigner, moving freely across the borders of mighty America, a silent observer of rising nationalism, on the brink of a presidential re-election marked by protectionist policies, compulsory denial of human responsibility in climate change, and, perhaps coincidentally, a distinctively orange complexion?
I found myself reflecting on our individual power, our ecological and democratic responsibility, and on that quiet, persistent guilt we carry for not doing enough. On the growing realization that maybe our personal actions have no significance whatsoever.
But what if they did? I began to imagine that my orange incident might have triggered a butterfly effect, setting off a chain of disasters, echoing the eco-anxiety, political anxiety, and social anxiety that press in on us so intensely in our world spinning ever faster, ever further out of control.
—Part of the “Tree_Line” solo show at bitforms gallery in New York, supported by the Tezos Foundation
—“The Orange Incident” short series comprises the works : “Air_Line“, “Gaso_Line“, “Border_Line“, “Off_Line“
— Generative art
—Made with custom Javascript code
—Format JPG, 5760x 5760 pixels
—Made in New York, June 2025