Wonderful Vacation in Plastic
Humanoid families leave their comfortable homes for a dream holiday in a resort made of plastic waste, joyfully turning ecological collapse into a cheerful vacation experience.
Year:
2026
Medium:
Generative audiovisual work, single-channel video, sound, infinite loop
Author:
Jiří Philippe Janda
Synopsis
Wonderful Vacation in Plastic follows several humanoid families as they leave their comfortable homes and travel to a seaside holiday resort made entirely of plastic waste. Upon arrival, they behave like ordinary tourists: they check into their accommodation, unpack their beach toys, sunbathe, drink coffee, play in the water, take souvenir photographs, explore ruins and collect strange plastic objects as memories of their trip.
The work is structured as a loop, moving from home to departure, from vacation pleasure to return, and finally back into the quiet emptiness of domestic life. What initially appears as a cheerful family holiday gradually becomes an absurd image of ecological denial. The polluted landscape is not presented as a disaster, but as a desirable destination — a place to be enjoyed, photographed and consumed.
Using the visual language of home videos, tourist snapshots and holiday memories, Wonderful Vacation in Plastic creates a contrast between joy and collapse, leisure and contamination, intimacy and planetary waste. The work asks how catastrophe becomes normalized when it is absorbed into everyday rituals of consumption, entertainment and escape.
Artist Statement
Wonderful Vacation in Plastic emerged from an earlier visual world that I returned to and transformed into a new gallery loop for the exhibition context in Hong Kong.
The work is based on a simple but disturbing idea: a family goes on holiday to a place that should be horrifying, but experiences it as paradise. The figures are not afraid of the plastic waste around them. They relax, play, take photos, drink coffee and bring souvenirs home. Their behaviour is ordinary, almost tender. This ordinariness is what makes the situation unsettling.
I was interested in the aesthetics of vacation as a ritual of escape: the need to leave home, consume an experience, collect images and return with memories. In the video, the holiday destination becomes a synthetic landscape of waste. Plastic is no longer only a sign of ecological damage; it becomes scenery, decoration, souvenir and memory.
Exhibitions & Screenings
June 19 – August 31, 2026 | Intangible Connections
HKDC DX Design Hub, Hong Kong
Group exhibition
Curated by Pavel Mrkus and Man Tin
