Bodies of Planned Obsolescence: Digital performance and the global politics of electronic waste

The United Kingdom is one of Europe's main producers of electronic-waste (e-waste). Despite strict EU regulations and control programmes, a substantial part of British e-waste is exported to developing countries, where it is often recycled through environmentally harmful methods or dumped in unprotected areas, causing severe environmental damage accompanied by a range of socio-cultural problems. Despite this, public debate on digital technologies in Britain and other post-industrial countries has been primarily focused on the economic and social benefits of technological innovation.

Digital performance arts practices have largely been complicit in this narrative. On the one hand, their primary interest has been in the exploration and showcasing of state of the art innovations; on the other, critical practices in the field have been restricted to the politics of a western, post-industrial cultural framework. Digital performance arts practitioners have rarely engaged with the material and socio-economic aspects of technology in terms of their production, and their 'afterlife' as electronic waste.

Bodies of Planned Obsolescence is a one-year international research networking project in which performance artists, art curators, scientists and cultural theorists will exchange and develop performance-based approaches to digital arts and the cultural and environmental aspects of the global economy of electronic waste. By re-functioning e-waste materials, digital arts practices will make the economic and ecological issues visible. By interaction with colleagues from other disciplines, the artists' impact will be augmented by scientific and socio-economic findings. The network overall will develop innovative international research collaborations with researchers from the UK as a country that exports a substantial part of its e-waste, and two countries that import e-waste: Nigeria and China.

This project will include the following key elements:
-Launch event at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
-Workshop & symposium in Hong Kong and Guiyu, China, combining paper and performance presentations with participation in labour processes at an e-waste recycling facility.
-Workshop & symposium in Lagos Nigeria, including practice-based explorations of e-waste dumping sites.
-Public conference/arts event at Watermans Art Centre in London, UK, which combines academic presentations with the creation of new performance work with electronic waste re-imported from Nigeria.

The focus on digital performance practices in Bodies of Planned Obsolescence is driven by the notion that critical practices in performance arts can constitute an intervention in broader cultural performative practices around understandings of - and engagement with - technology. An innovative aspect of Bodies of Planned Obsolescence is its methodological approach to practice-based research, which builds on anthropologist Tim Ingold's insight that not only art, but also anthropology, archaeology, and architecture should be practiced as 'thinking through making', instead of a focus on theorizing an externalized world..

Bodies of Planned Obsolescence seeks to extend Ingold's approach into collaborative work in the field of science and arts. Thus, practice-based research in digital performance arts is not only conceived as building on - and responding to - academic and scientific theory, as is often the case in science-arts collaborations, but also constitutes a process of 'blue-sky' experimentation, which may play an initiating role in discourse and research in other disciplines, as well as establish alternate modes of dissemination of scientific and humanities research on e-waste outside academia.

Key impact areas:
1) Arts Practitioners
Collaborations with leading arts organizations will open the different events of the network to broader local audiences of professional artists. A collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum Digital Programmes department has been agreed, which will involve the inclusion of project activities in the V&A Digital Design Weekend. This is one of the UK's leading networking platforms for digital artists, which also reaches a broad audience of the general public (see below). In Nigeria, a collaboration with the Lagos Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) will facilitate involvement of the Lagos performance and new media art community, whilst an outreach to the professional artist community in Hong Kong is currently being discussed with the Hong Kong Performance Art Project of the Asian Art Archive. The Principal Investigator, Dr Daniël Ploeger, will bring to the network a number of internationally recognized performance artists who have worked extensively in a science-art context. The participating artists - in addition to the project website and public media channels (see below) - will be important liaisons for further dissemination of the project's outcomes and activities in arts communities outside academia.

2) General Audience
The network's public event in London, as well as part of the workshops in Lagos and Guiyu/Hong Kong will take place at venues open to the general public that already draw a broad audience. All events will be free of charge. The project's events and its outcomes will also be brought to the attention of the general public through the following channels:
-Participant Irini Papadimitriou, Digital Programmes Manager at the V&A Museum and Head of New Media Arts Development at the Watermans Art Centre, London, will include UK-based activities in the programmes of both the V&A Museum and the Watermans Art Centre.
-The CI is active in educational projects around waste and ecology in Hong Kong and is a chartered member of the YMCA youth organization. In these roles, she will integrate the project's themes, methodologies and outcomes into learning activities for secondary school students.
-The Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) is Lagos' main contemporary arts venue with a broad and loyal audience from the general public. The centre will integrate the project into their public programme.
-The project website will play a central role in the dissemination of information about project activities. In addition, the site will constitute a publicly accessible archive, which will remain available after the project's completion.

3) Policy Makers
The network is also aimed at disseminating its processes and outcomes to policy makers, and the inclusion of policy makers and lobbying groups in the public elements of the network's activities in the three countries. Connections to various bodies affiliated with environmental policy making have been established and will be further developed, building on network members' existing affiliations: The CI is a member of the Environmental Management Association of Hong Kong, participant Prof Oladele Osibanjo is a leading expert in the global trade of e-waste and a key person in the Secretariat of the Basel Convention the world's most important policy making body concerned with e-waste.

4) Media impact
Peter Dammann, a World Press Photo award winning photographer with extensive experience in the documentation of the social dimensions of cultural and industrial activity in developing countries, has generously agreed to document the project on the basis of reimbursement of travel and accommodation expenses. Dammann has important connections to relevant journalists in the field of international development who are interested to write about the project. The network's activities and outcomes will also be disseminated to the press through the PR offices of the Watermans Art Centre, and the Centre for Contemporary Arts Lagos.