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Contribution short abstract:

My paper uses waste as a key concept for research and public engagement, to explore the limits of visibility in museums. I combine two bodies of ethnographic data: on unindexed and de-structured collections in two state institutions and research on waste management in private blocks of flats.

Contribution long abstract:

Building on expertise at the intersection of contemporary art, anthropology and exhibition making, I explore ways to give visibility to what is very often made invisible: the importance and cultural uses of waste. How can research on waste management in post-socialist environments contribute to the process of scrapping the museum? How does the post-socialist conditions of dealing with objects contribute to current post colonial debates?

According to sociologist Michael Thompson (1979), waste is key in allowing change and transfers of value between three main categories of objects: the Transient (of whose value decreases), the Durable (of whose value increases) and Rubbish (no value). I suggest that the porosity of museums and of other important cultural state institutions (Nicolescu 2023) allow the storage and display of complex and problematic items that can be perceived as Transient, as well as the Rubbish of history. Inspired by artistic interpretations of waste including Ilya Kabakov’s 'The Man who never threw anything away' to Agnes Varda’s documentary 'Les Glaneurs and la Glaneuse', I use exhibition making and the museum as methods of research and public engagement to discuss the values that waste can take and to explore ways in which to exhibit the Durable.

Research on unindexed and de-structured collections at the National Library of Romania and at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant allows us to see the social and cultural construction of value and how these transfers of value are made both locally and globally.