14–16.05.24 PERFORMING WASTE: WRITING WORKSHOP IN TWO PARTS

The research project evolved from the common interest in the figure of waste and wastelands of various kinds as memoryscapes of communities to come in the wake of the  present day ecological and economic crises. Their general understanding  of waste is rooted in similar theoretical contexts that emphasise the relevance of the dissolution of existing social ties which creates potentials for redefining communities as more-than-human collectives striving to survive on the ruins of the capitalist world. Based on this assumption, the project partners want to introduce a shift in the common perspective on waste and wastelands by focusing primarily on their performative potential to create new forms of commonalities. 

It is our contention that we will not be able to develop new performative forms of commonality and social change, unless the narrow understanding of theatre and performance as artistic acts and the aesthetic framework of interpretation of life worlds and cultures are not overcome. It is precisely the impact of the diverse agents (humans and more-than-humans, artefacts, resources, organic remnants, technological remains, viruses etc.) that may facilitate the much-needed shift in research perspective. That is why bringing out the agency of these more-than-human entanglements in contemporary performative arts requires new theoretical  and practical approaches, in which commemoration combines close description with speculative fabulation. The research project intends to offer these new approaches by focusing on the ways in which waste are performed today.

A multi-authored book Performing Waste: To Re-Member Pasts And Fabulate Futures, edited by Dorota Sajewska and Małgorzata Sugiera, will be published by Routledge in 2025.