The Restart project: Commodity afterlife
This project emerged from the concepts discovered in my previous theoretic and visual work concerning the significance of waste found within the public realm and my contemporary street life project of central Accra, Ghana. Whilst examining what the possible implications of what waste might tell us about urban life and culture, I found a vast amount of literature concerning particular economic and social attitudes that may have influenced our decisions of what we deem as waste. Consumer culture (Arnould et al,. 2005) became a reoccurring theme within my research, particularly regarding the notions of rapidity, newness, status and power. The idea of a commodity life span and its timeline interested me, as I have always been particularly suspicious of corporations that release ‘new and updated’ products as soon as a fault or problem occurs in an older version. These issues mostly manifest within the market of technologies. Advances in ‘technological innovation’ constantly usher in new and pioneering machinery which leaves the recently purchased products distinctly lacking. I began to wonder what happened to the products that got left behind or rather, the objects that got sent away.
In my project of Accra, I remember photographing a woman who looked as though she lived in a slum. I had no idea at the time how terrifyingly accurate I had been. Later I did some further research into electronic waste and uncovered that in central Accra, one of the world’s largest e-waste dumpsites Agbogbloshie was home to hundreds of thousands of Ghanaian’s living in diabolical conditions. They were surrounded by electronic waste illegally dumped from a variety of western nations including the U.K.
I was incredible upset because I knew how much Ghana was trying to attract foreign investors in and around Accra and after all it was the birth place of my parents. Consequently, I wanted to explore the environmental, sociological and possible symbolic concerns this situation addressed. Firstly, I wanted to know what the U.K. was doing to prevent this from happening, if anything at all. I did not want to present a biased depiction of the situation which could possibly vilify the countries that contribute to the waste. I decided to seek out U.K. based organisations that focused on reducing electronic waste and the accumulation of exhausted commodities. One such organisation was The Restart Project, South London. The project is a social enterprise aiming to encourage and empower the general public to use their electronic equipment for longer. They host regular events and workshops teaching the local community basic repair and maintenance skills which could save them from upgrading and throwing away perfectly capable electronics.
The Restart Project embodied an ethic that I believed in: it provided a solution to the rapidity of waste and the preservation of self. I believe a lot of who we are is what we own and use, if we throw things away every 18 months what does that say about us and our identity within the urban realm? This project goes against the grain. It tries to challenge our ideas of what we understand as ‘value’. I wanted to explore this dilemma; the choice to save something old or replace it with something new.
For more information please check out :The Restart Project
