Ocean plastics permeate ever deeper into the lives of a growing number of humans and nonhumans and as such present an enormous environmental problem. However, its form is not self-evident, as well as the fact that we speak of a problem at all. In this paper, therefore, I trace processes of reality enactment of ocean plastics that were and still continue to be performed in many practices (e.g. scientific or activist), and their framing as a problem. With the help of Bruno Latour's concept of collective, I put the emergence of the whole problem into historical context. Ocean plastics were for many years of their gradual accumulation not visible, leading to their growth into a massive and dangerous hyperobject. It was registered by work of many particular practices thanks to which we have gradually learned to see ocean plastics. However, this was not merely a neutral discovering of their reality - this reality was being in these practices variously enacted which had as an effect its multiplication. Thus, I analyze realities forming within three projects - The Ocean Cleanup, Wasteland, Adidas x Parley - including mutual negotiations about ontology and aesthetics (sensual perception) of the problem that make possible speaking of a single ocean plastics problem. Its important part is an imaginary. Most...
