Details
Watch two recent short films from the Middle East, to examine the role of academic and artistic production in challenging knowledge and inspiring activism around waste and toxicity.
Urban Lab Films and Bertha DocHouse present a screening and moderated discussion on two recent short films from the Middle East, to examine the role of academic and artistic production in challenging knowledge and inspiring activism around waste and toxicity.
We will consider the links between contamination caused by waste and toxic politics to discuss how different forms of knowledge production can account for the often complex trajectories of rubbish, its slow and difficult-to-trace impact, and the complexity of political forces at play.
About the Films
Kink Retrograde (2019; 19’) by Lebanese artist Bassem Saad, and Waste Underground (2017; 15’) by anthropologist Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins and Palestinian cinematographer Ali Aldeek, focus respectively on the ‘garbage crisis’ plaguing Lebanon since 2015 and the role of waste in Palestine under occupation.
The films engage in different ways with the links between spaces contaminated by waste and toxic political systems and will allow us to consider how value chains and waste circulations are entangled across the Global North / South divide.
