WASTELAND is a transdisciplinary festival for waste ecologies based in the Hague.
Today waste constitutes the most abundant and enduring trace of humanty on the planet, with pollutants present in the air, soil, water, ice and in living organisms all over the world, even in regions where humans have never set foot. Affluent countries, including the Netherlands, produce the greatest amounts of waste per capita, which only continues to grow. While in the recent years, considerable efforts have been put into improving recycling technology, the surge of waste volumes still greatly exceeds the current increase in recycling capacity. Contrary to the perception of waste as static, it is an active and dynamic phenomenon, continuously flowing through and affecting complex socio-political and geographical landscapes all over the world. But most streams of waste, moved by millions of hands, ships, waters and wind currents remain remarkably out of sight, and out of mind.
Transdisciplinary festival WASTELAND invites its audience and participants to look at waste and its journeys, trace their impact on places, people and non-human beings, map problems and search for solutions. It follows global and local waste streams in the exhibition, several weekends of engaging programming with talks, workshops and screenings, a network program promoting experiment and collaborations, public interventions, and pre-program events. The festival brings together designers, artists, thinkers, researchers, activists, waste management professionals and the broad public.
