‘What a fucking waste’: outrage, evasive labour, and building care from the shadows
with dumpster divers
Guest lecture by Willow Ross
An
event by the Department of Transcultural Studies.
Willow
Ross is a cultural geographer and postgraduate researcher raised on the unceded lands of the Kaurna, Wurundjeri and Bunurong
peoples. She is interested in the intersections of waste, activism, and creative methods. Her research asks how ordinary people
come to politicise the things and places we throw away – and how they fight back.
Willow uses participatory and
creative methods to draw out feminist geographies of place and waste. In the past, this has included urban walking tours,
‘dive-along’ interviews with dumpster divers, zine-making and collaging workshops, and community recipe book-making. She is
guided by writing from stolen lands (so-called ‘Australia’) and writings on shadow places, shadow care, and informal economies
of waste.
Willow is currently publishing research on dumpster diving in Naarm/Melbourne and beginning a her research
project on anti-nuclear waste activism. She also teaches and works as a research associate in history and geography, asking
how people are shaped by connections with urban and rural natures, more-than-human worlds, and how identities are mediated
by power and resistance in place.
The event is part of the seminar Trash und anderer Mist und Müll [Trash and
Other Garbage] held by Nanna Heidenreich (Transcultural Studies), which is organised in cooperation with the seminar
Schmutz und Schund [Dirt and Trash] held by Thomas Waitz at the Institute for Theater, Film, and Media Studies at
the University of Vienna.
Moderation: Nanna Heidenreich
Admission
The guest lecture is open to the public and welcomes anyone interested.
