I’ll be leading a seminar at Durham University on 28th October 2015. The seminar is hosted by the School of Modern Languages and Cultures and their interdisciplinary Ecology & the Arts Research Group. Here are the details in full:
When: 12pm-1pm, 28th October 2015
Where: A56, Elvet Riverside I, Durham University
The seminar is free and all are welcome
For more details please contact the group’s convenor, Dr. Kirsten Oloff
As much as possible the talk will be a summary of my Waste book. I’ve copied the abstract below:
Any theory of waste must account for why waste remains tangibly and capaciously significant, why it can mean so many different things, to so many different people, and across many different times. The broad scales at which waste can operate – from the isolated foreclosure or suspension of utility in a single object to the cataclysmic end of an entire ecosystem – reflects how an emphasis on physical or semantic finitude neglects an excessive quality to what waste is, does, and yet might do. At its most basic, the purpose of this paper is to explore who or what makes discarded things such polymorphic instruments with which to fashion arguments about the world and its inhabitants. This paper will also outline how waste performs and enters into states of performance, how it operates through structures of contradiction that make it such an abundantly meaningful thing to think with. Using examples drawn from works of sculpture, architecture and literature, I explain how we often make and take time according to our engagement with discarded things, and how this chronographic potential shapes an important means by which to consider the form and extent of an artwork’s effects. The paper concludes on the telling and vital influence of waste; far from the degraded, lifeless, abject, or disorderly, the concept and experience of waste is shown to be an integral part of environments as they are built and unbuilt over time.
Waste Effects 
Can we attend online?