The underlying theme that we are planning to explore through the London Situation tackles current issues around the social & economic relationships with material things, and how these alternative counter-economies are evolving alongside the materialistic obsolescence of capitalist consumption.
LONDON SITUATION e-waste Questionnaire: Tell us what you think here!
Some facts:
New EU regulations will soon require member states to collect 45 tonnes of e-waste for every 100 tonnes of electronic goods put on sale during the previous three years, with a target of 4kg of e-waste per person. That’s about 2 million tonnes of e-waste to be collected every year – out of a total of 8 million tonnes generated annually in the EU. Who will be doing this collecting? Who will pay for it? Where and how will the e-waste be recycled? And what happens to the 8 million tonnes not collected for recycling?
“They thought that computer networks could create order in society without central controls. But this was a fear that allowing individuals too much freedom could create anarchy. Technology failed to liberate humanity.”
What we have been looking at:
- The UK Environment Agency’s efforts to tackle illegal e-waste exports.
- Britain’s e-waste illegally leaking into West Africa – BBC Panorama Report (16 May 2011)
- All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Adam Curtis: documentary based on how technology was created to liberate us, but in actual fact it has done the complete opposite.
- Sophie Gerrard’s photography about e-waste wasteland and Chris Jordan’s baby albatross photos.
- Prosperity Without Growth by Tim Jackson
- The T.O.Y.S. on Tour project, from which Eva Ursprung (Schaumbad) shared her photographs of the e-waste site “Sodom and Gommoragh” in Ghana.
- Art projects that recycle technology by Theo Kamecke; Susan Stockwell;
- e-waste song from Greenpeace
- What toxins lurk inside your iPhone?
- And for some humour, to remember what life was like before e-waste …