Short Abstract:

In this lab process, 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 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 reflection. It 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. We would prefer to focus on urban contexts for this lab (not excluding their bodies of water), as the majority of existing studies focus on marine environments, such as oceans.

Participants pre-register and receive pre-meeting guidance about video documentation. Participants undertake field collection of video before the lab meeting, adhering to ethical filming, and recording instances of plastic relating to 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. Keep in mind that video observation can directly or indirectly relate to plastic materiality and plastic pollution. You can explore any urban context, not only Barcelona. Low-tech approaches are welcome. Remote collaboration will be done by participants uploading video clips to an online platform before the lab meeting in Barcelona. Video will be provisionally curated before the lab meeting, then together participants will view and discuss their approaches, the results and the possibilities of this modality of grasping plastic materiality.

For signup and guidance, see here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18SiKHhckdHqh33OriXSpkbPRhgrezAMFVc0k8_ER1y4/edit?ts=66733122