Art And The Toxic Politics Of Waste: Lebanon And Palestine – Q&A

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.

About the Speakers
Bassem Saad is an artist and writer trained in architecture. His work explores objects and operations that distribute violence, pleasure, welfare, and waste. Through video, sculpture, and writing, he investigates and records strategies for manoeuvring within and beyond governance systems.

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins is a cultural anthropologist and an Assistant Professor at Bard College, whose monograph Waste Siege was published with Stanford University Press in 2020. Waste Underground emerges from her fieldwork on efforts to bury Palestinian wastes in the West Bank.

Elizabeth Saleh works in the fields of political and economic anthropology with a special focus on waste, agriculture, labour and gender. She currently works as an assistant professor in Anthropology at the American University of Beirut.

Hanna Baumann (chair) is a Senior Research Fellow at The Bartlett’s Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL. Her research is concerned with the role of infrastructures in urban conflict, exclusion and displacement.

About the Organisers
This event is organised in partnership with Bertha DocHouse by Dr Hanna Baumann (UCL Institute for Global Prosperity) and Dr Adriana Massidda (De Montfort University), in collaboration with UCL Urban Laboratory and the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies’ joint ‘waste’ research theme.