Symphony of Waste

What happens over the lifecycle of a commodity? Where do its components come from? How are they extracted, processed and put together? Where does it travel, and how is it used, thrown away, re-used, broken apart and reconstituted? These questions are at the heart of Rubbish Music’s Symphony of Waste.

Over four years, Rubbish Music’s practice has intervened in modest ways in the lives of discarded commodities. Packaging has lived on as instruments, and tin cans have been re-purposed as tools for playing. Living closely with rubbish has opened up its journeys and transformations.

In sound, Symphony of Waste follows chains of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. It traces materials through factories, brief useful lives, crushing, sorting, melting, decay and re-purposing, asking what it might mean to make things that remain useful for longer and can be repaired, transformed and shared more equally.