We are artists-in-residence at l’Observatoire for the months of November and December, and we’ve set up shop as The GLOOB Factory.
The GLOOB Factory is a factory for ARTmaking with paper pulp from paper waste, outside the logics of mass reproduction. The paper and pulp industry operates at massive scales in Southeast Asia with devastating environmental consequences. Through its production processes, the GLOOB Factory provides opportunities for exploring how and why things are made from paper, and the impacts of those things on the environment.
GLOOB is a play on glob, globe, and other wonderfuls. (There are also two Os in STUDIOOSS). The GLOOB Factory is a play on modern factory production but with totally different means and opposite ends. The GLOOB Factory is divided into four zones—the warehouse for raw materials, the lab for R&D, the factory floor for pulp making and sculpting (play at the GLOOB table or throw GLOOB at the wall), and the showroom for display. While flexible systems and processes for production are carefully designed for The GLOOB Factory, the things themselves are not pre-planned. Nobody knows what The GLOOB Factory is going to make in advance. The GLOOB Factory shape-shifts. Walls, floors and tables morph and grow with the fantastical things that are made by the people inside it.