Overview

Performing Waste offers groundbreaking insights into the vibrant interdisciplinary field of waste studies through the lens of performance and artistic practice. This pioneering collection examines how waste and wasting are performed across diverse media and genres, from Afrofuturist musical works to contemporary scrap art installations. Distinguished international scholars present original research using situated methodologies, including ethnographic approaches, to analyse compelling case studies that span global contexts. The volume explores eco-trauma and toxic kinship in artistic works, investigates the relationship between extractivism and knowledge production, and examines critical sites like the Polish-Belorussian border and e-waste processing in Ghana and Peru. By reframing familiar environmental narratives and introducing novel perspectives on waste agency, materiality, and performance, the collection challenges conventional understandings of our discarded materials and practices. Each contribution illuminates how waste performance can help us reimagine ecological relationships and envision alternative futures beyond extractivist paradigms. This volume is an essential reading for students and scholars in environmental humanities, post humanist theory, decolonial studies, eco-arts, media studies, and performance studies, as well as anyone concerned with creative responses to our global waste crisis.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dorota Sajewska ,  Małgorzata Sugiera
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
ISBN:  

9781041020813

ISBN 10:   1041020813
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   24 February 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Note on Contributors Performing Waste: An Introduction by Dorota Sajewska, Małgorzata Sugiera Part I: Practices of Wasting and Knowing Chapter 1. Beneath Your Very Eyes by Ruth Schmidt Chapter 2. The Rejected Remains as Fact by Katarzyna Trzeciak Chapter 3. Notes on Waste by Dorota Sajewska Chapter 4. On Rag-picking as Creative Intervention in Knowledge Production by Małgorzata Sugiera Part II: Following Waste Chapter 5. Unruly Performativity and Tactics of the Wastebound by Mateusz Borowski Chapter 6. Suspending Discarding by Bettina Knaup Chapter 7. The Art of Scrap by Marta Tomczok and Paweł Tomczok Chapter 8. Below the Threshold by Julia Schade Chapter 9. People on the Move and Their Things by Filip Ryba Part III: Re-membering Wasted Lands Chapter 10. Spoiling Occupation by Mateusz Chaberski Chapter 11. Living after an End of the World by Catherin Persing Chapter 12. Wandering through the Smell of the Capitalocene by Leon Gabriel Chapter 13. Sirenology and the Enchantment of Plastic by Fabienne Liptay Index

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Author Information

Dorota Sajewska is a Full Professor for Theatre and Performance Studies at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Malgorzata Sugiera is a Full Professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and Head of the Department of Performativity Studies.

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