Short Abstract:

In this Barcelona-based lab, participants use mobile phones for remote video and photography to track and creatively document plastic pollution. The lab examines plastic's impact on urban ecology and its role as a vehicle of toxicity, and fosters ecological consciousness and inclusivity.

Long Abstract:

This anthropology lab, set in Barcelona, focuses on examining the intersections between environmental and social landscapes, specifically through tracking plastic pollution and its emerging flows of toxicity. It employs remote participatory video and photography using mobile phones as a tool for (creative and imaginative) documentation and analysis. The lab seeks to imagine and document how plastic proliferates and transforms or how we sense it entering the city’s ecology and the body. It explores the method of remote participatory video as a way of capturing plastic as a vehicle of toxicity and queer matter that creates new kinds of life-matter relations, and it fosters a view of ecological consciousness and social inclusivity within urban environments.

Modality is online. Participants pre-register and will remotely be pre-trained in video documentation using their own mobile phones. Participants undertake field collection of video, adhering to ethical filming, and recording instances of plastic from the range of its materiality: objects, waste, sensing micro and nano plastics and the chemicals and pathogens that plastic transports through the city, the body, land and sea. Remote collaboration will be done by uploading video to an online platform and curated for the conference lab for viewing by registered participants to compare and contrast observations and findings.