samfuturism

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Gladys Muyenzelwa is a Gaborone based artist and designer who has an eye for ethnic and contemporary design. But unlike other designers, Muyenzelwa has found a way of using e-waste to make her creations.

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Situating my research

Rapid changes in technology, changes in media, falling prices, and planned obsolescence, have resulted in a fast-growing surplus of electronic waste (e-waste) around the globe. In 2016, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated the amount of worldwide e-waste discarded each year to be 1.8 billion metric tons, and that figure is expected to rise by 8% each year. One of the challenges of growing global consumerism - and as a result, growing waste - is that only 20% of global e-waste is recycled, and that e-waste accounts for over 70% of hazardous waste in landfills worldwide. Although figures like those are compelling, I believe that it is difficult for consumers, especially in the West, to really conceptualize the severity of the situation, because so much of this waste is hidden from the mainstream.

The focus of my thesis project is to make this hidden waste visible, and to create an immersive experience where audiences are confronted by the scope of, and the urgent need to better address, e-waste issues on a global scale. Using principles of critical design, I hope to create a series of vignettes that allow users to visualize the tangible and complex connections between digital devices and the eco-political landscape of e-waste, now and in the future.

In my opinion, e-waste poses important ecological, political, and cultural challenges on a global scale, but I do not think that it is being addressed with enough urgency. There is lots of information available online, and elsewhere, that details the specifics of how much e-waste is produced, and what sorts of health and environmental consequences are related to e-waste. So, I do not think that a lack of data, or even a lack of awareness, is the issue. Rather, I think that there is a disconnect between these facts and figures, and people actually feeling implicated by that data. I think that is partly to do with the fact that all waste, and e-waste is no exception, is hidden from us in our day to day lives. When I say “us”, I am specifically talking about people living in the West, in places like Toronto. Very few of us actually have seen landfills full of e-waste, or have water that is contaminated by toxic pollutants that come from e-waste, or know someone who forages through piles old computers to extract microchips with their fingers. Because we have such little interaction with e-waste disposal, it becomes this sort of abstract thing that affects “other” people, which is a hugely problematic stance.

The brunt of the impact of e-waste is felt in the Global South, in countries like India and Ghana, although these countries do not contribute a very high proportion of the production of e-waste. The issue of e-waste disposal is an example of techno-colonialism, and imperialism by proxy, whereby the Global North outsources its problems, using the rest of the world as its dumping ground, without feeling much of the impact.

With that critique in mind, I am using a postcolonial ecocritical perspective to ground much of the theory that I am reading. In his essay “Toward an African Ecocentrism” (2008), Anthony Vital describes postcolonial ecocriticism as a “politics and philosophy of environmental activism that is attuned to histories of unequal development, and varieties of discrimination, and contests the disparity between Western and non-Western cultures,” (90).

My personal politics are grounded in a feminist, decolonial, and intersectional perspective. What this means, for me and my academic work, is that I choose to take a critical stance to all readings and media that I am referencing in my thesis. This also involves challenging assumptions about power, blame, and responsibility, and complicating relationships and entanglements like transnational trade and globalization. Additionally, it is essential to me that at least 50% of my bibliography and creative references come from non-Western, non-male sources. I am also interested in the specific ways that e-waste issues are gendered, racialized, and “queered” by focusing on non-Western contexts like China, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, and Pakistan.

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E-waste World Installation

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Questions

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Night Light experiments 2

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Night Light experiments

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Mockup of critique installation

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https://vizor.io/draft/jSTWhZUpuTxb

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Mockup of potential Digital Debris (final) installation