Times of Waste (2015-18)
CH/DE/FR/MA/OBV/NGA/CHN 2015-18 / HD / artistic-scientific research / German and English version / different media / various presentation formats (exhibitions, audio walk, online archive, panels, workshops, text publications)
Concept, research and realisation
Research team Times of Waste: Flavia Caviezel (lead), Mirjam Bürgin, Anselm Caminada, Adrian Demleitner, Marion Mertens, Yvonne Volkart, Sonia Malpeso
In collaboration with
Peter Burleigh (translation/proofreading), Andrea Zaccuri (animation), Froelich & Corbella GmbH (metal construction), Mohomodou Houssouba, Daniel Kötter (smartphone object biography), Museum der Kulturen Basel, Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, Stedman Gallery Rutgers University-Camden New Jersey, Haus zur Glocke Steckborn, Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (exhibitions), HeK House of Electronic Arts Basel (panel discussion)
Production / Funding
FHNW Academy of Art and Design; financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation
Synopsis
Waste is material that is perceived differently depending on the context. Whether it is a promising resource or the unavoidable leftover: what becomes waste cannot be disposed of without trace.
The interdisciplinary team of the research project Times of Waste tracks paths and transport routes of (waste) materials and objects. For electronic waste, the transformation processes and revaluations of a smartphone and its components are examined. It is a regular everyday device that leaves many types of waste. The greatest amount of waste, however, is produced long before it is used for the first time. Especially in the "extraction" of raw materials such as neodymium, which is mined under precarious ecological, socio-economic and health conditions, huge amounts of waste are produced.
Using artistic-scientific research practices and various media as video, photography and sound the team investigates waste materials and the fields of human work. The project includes various forms of collaboration, both in the interdisciplinary team, as well as with the project partners and protagonists on site. The interest is in the modes and possibilities of collaboration between science and the arts, qualitative methods and transmedia techniques. The aim is a closeness to the different non/human actants and to materiality on site, with a range from local landfills, repair shops or research laboratories, to global contexts.
Times of Waste is based especially on theories of New Materialism which relay on Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway’s theoretical framework, as for example Jane Bennett, Timothy Morton, Karen Barad or Jussi Parikka.
In transnational research, fractures and fragmentations are characteristic. The "concatenation" of the various media fragments makes it possible to place the routes and transformation processes of the objects and materials in an overall context. A digital archive, smartphone object biography, maps these often intricate routes and recycling movements of the transnational research setting, which extends from the local Swiss to the European context and into global entanglements. The object biography is a multi-sited mapping of possible routes and transformation processes. It makes it possible to choose individual paths through the materials available online, and thus to create a unique joined-up story. This is a response to the problem that the object biography can only be told in multiple variations.
The fact that people not only remove the earth's crust in their search for raw materials, but also rebuild it with new residual material is evidenced by the geological and material afterlife from the field research into various granules, slags or metals. Which leads to the question: where do the remains go? And what options are there to do something about it?
With presentation formats such as exhibitions, an audio walk, project workshops, panels, text publications and the smartphone object biography Times of Waste initiates a public discussion and debate on these questions. The goal is to break the cultural connotations of waste and to encourage the sustainable use of raw materials.
Exhibitions
Times of Waste – The Leftover, Museum der Kulturen Basel, with video projections, metal sculpture, audio essay, soundscape (2017).
Stedman Gallery Rutgers University-Camden, New Jersey/Philadelphia; Haus zur Glocke Steckborn (all in 2018); Kunstgewerbemuseum Winterthur (2018-19); Future Sense HGK FHNW, Culturart Literargymnasium Rämibühl Zürich (all in 2019); Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (2020).
For further information about the exhibitions see https://times-of-waste.ch/en/exhibition/
For panel discussions, workshops, contributions at conferences etc. visit project website.
Publications
Times of Waste Research Team. Metals never die. In: Johannes Bruder et al. (Ed.), Lost & Found, continent, issue 5.1 2016: 11-13. Download
Times of Waste Research Team. Times of Waste. In: Linda Kronman, Andreas Zingerle (Ed.), Behind the Smart World – saving, deleting and resurfacing data, Linz: servus.at, 2016. Download
Yvonne Volkart. Müll zu Gold? In: springerin 1/16. https://www.springerin.at/2016/1/mull-zu-gold/
Yvonne Volkart. From Trash to Waste: On Art’s Media Geology. In: Texte zur Kunst Ausgabe 108, December 2017. https://www.textezurkunst.de/108/von-trash-zu-waste/ Download
Flavia Caviezel. Müll sichtbar machen. Interview (in German) a.o. about Times of Waste in the radio emission Müll oder kein Müll, SRF2Kultur, Kontext 17.4.2018, 57 Min.
https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/kontext/muell-oder-kein-muell
Project website
https://times-of-waste.ch (project website)
https://objektbiografie.times-of-waste.ch (smartphone object biography / online archive)
