RANDOM NOTES / TRAVEL DIARY: Thoughts on GLITTER

“Who cares about glitter when you can care about politics?”

Glitter is an old invention.  People have always had a fascination for shiny things. The word derives from the Old Norse word "glitra".
The first known use the for the word “glitter” was in the 14th century.
But before that already a shiny type of rock called mica was used to create shiny surfaces. This has been found from cave paintings from 40 000 to 10 000 BC. Ancient Egyptians used crushed-up-beetles as a glitter-like-substance.

Modern-day glitter is made out of plastic.It was invented by accident by a guy named Henry Ruschmann. He was grinding up plastics and other materials from landfills, so basically first plastic glitter was made from trash. His company making glitter exists even today.
Plastic glitter is made from cutting huge sheets of thin plastic covered with aluminium or other reflective material into smaller pieces.
For color, the glitter is then covered with titanium dioxide, and the colour of glitter depends on the thickness of the titanium dioxide layer.

Glitter might seem harmless, meant only for teenagers, drag queens and Beyoncé.
But the US Army was planning to shoot glitter made out of aluminium to distract the enemy’s radar during World War II.
But they decided not to do it, it is said because they didn’t want the other side to start aluminium glitter bombing too. (I wish they would have thought the same with nuclear bombs too….)

Sending glitter bombs has been not only a prank but a form of political activism.
Glitter, as shiny, wonderful and festive as it is, is also in it is “lightness” a politically charged material, adopted especially by the feminist and LGBTQ movements. The seeming harmlessness and charming festivity in glitter gives it an interesting, festive quality as a material for protest and activism. Politics and glitter seemingly don’t go to the same sentence because you can’t take glitter seriously and politics is serious, not some make up. There aren’t many materials which are more unconvincing. So using glitter might make a nice confusion, give some sparkle, fairy dust, association to festival, dreaming and some sort playful liberty about yourself and the subject.


Glitter is also annoying in its ability to spread and stick, it spreads easily and is hard to get cleaned off. It is maybe a good model for how infections, bacteria or ideas and emotions spread. It is just everywhere once it’s there.

You can trace who’s been where and with whom just  by following the glitter.

Glitter can also be used as evidence for crime, there is a paper published with the the title “Glitter as forensic evidence” (http://projects.nfstc.org/trace/docs/final/Blackledge_Glitter.pdf)



But the huge great downside of plastic glitter is that it is a terrible example of micro plastics, this tragical material suffocating our seas and bodies. Plus it's covered with aluminium. Something so wonderful as glitter is basically extremely terrible in its physica fossil-based materiality.

But alas!!!

The world is slowly getting a better and more conscious place:

The glitter used in these photos and in CI performances is biodegradable, made from plants.
Good non-fossil-based glitter exists.

We have hope for the future.

Sources:

The history of glitter
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/3dxmp3/the-history-of-glitter

The history of plastic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#History

The history of glitter bombing:
https://qz.com/931204/the-brief-sparkly-history-of-using-glitter-to-fight-for-lgbtq-rights/