Material Flows: the hidden afterlives of plastic waste

Material Flows explores the hidden journeys and afterlives of plastic waste. By mapping the trajectories of waste colonialism, the project situates plastic as both material and metaphor for the enduring inequalities and environmental crises shaped by global systems of extraction and disposal. At the centre is the colonial legacy of resource extraction by companies such as the Dutch East India Company, whose activities in Indonesia laid the groundwork for the exploitative resource systems that endure today. 150 years of oil extraction has left a lasting impact. The same resources that fuelled colonial economies now drive plastic production, only for the resulting waste to often return to Indonesia, Malaysia and other former colonies. These cyclical flows highlight how historic patterns of extraction persist, amplifying environmental injustices within contemporary global waste streams.

The toxic entanglements of waste colonialism render territories and communities available for pollution through poorly managed processes of waste recovery. They lead to systems of labour organisation in which broken and contaminated bodies are used up (Liboiron, 2021; Gidwani, 2015; Jeffery and Parry, 2023). The global waste trade, shaped by economic and regulatory imbalances, often exploits countries with weak environmental regulations and cheap labour, reinforcing a contemporary form of waste colonialism. Large quantities of plastic waste end up in landfills, waterways, or are incinerated, creating long-lasting toxic entanglements that expose vulnerable territories and communities to pollution (Liboiron, 2021).

These flows impose a heavy toll, maintaining exploitative labour systems that extract value from discarded materials, while simultaneously devaluing human and environmental health (Tadiar, 2022). The biopolitics of disposability (Giroux, 2007) thus underpin the exhibition, examining how uneven distributions of waste and exploitation define the landscapes of the current ‘polycrisis’ (Morin and Kern, 1999).

Material Flows unfolds through objects, installations, film, and multimedia artworks. Employing plastic as both a material and a conceptual anchor, the exhibition maps shifting global waste flows as part of a longer-term research project in collaboration with Zone2Source. This unearthing of plastic entanglements and waste afterlives emerged from a participatory research project led by Compound 13 Lab (2017 – 2023), which focused on the informal waste and plastic recycling economy in Mumbai. Material Flows introduces a new phase of practice-led research, exploring waste colonialism by literally following plastic as it circumnavigates the globe: from its petrochemical origins, to its disposal across the economic and material trajectories of the plastic waste trade.

This collaborative enquiry connects researchers, artists, and material scientists in the UK, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India, unfolding through a series of "plastic dialogues" that create a spatial narrative of objects, infrastructures, and human and non-human actors, in which plastic, as both a material and a transformative process, animates the global networks of extraction, production, and waste.



References

Giroux, H. (2007) ‘Violence, Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability’, Theory Culture Society 24: 7/8, pp. 305 - 309

Gidwani, V. (2015) ‘The Work of Waste: inside India’s infra-economy’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 40: 5, pp. 575- 595

Jeffery, G. and Parry, B. (eds.) (2023) Waste Work: the Art of Survival in Dharavi, Bath: Arts Editions North/Wunderkammer Press

Liboiron, M., (2021) Pollution is Colonialism, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press

Morin, E. and Kern, A.B. (1999) Homeland Earth: a Manifesto for the New Millennium, New York: Hampton Press

Tadiar, N. X.M. (2022) Remaindered Life, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press