Contributors will include exhibiting artists, Ravi Agarwal, Diana Lelonek, Kevin van Braak, Maarten Vanden Eynde and international experts including Professor Caroline Knowles, Professor Rosalind Malcolm and EU Policy Analyst Elahe Rajabiani.

The debate will be in English.

To register click here.

Program details

Plastic Dialogues
Friday April 11, 1:00 – 6:00 pm
het Glazen Huis, Amstelpark

1:00 Walk in for view of the exhibition in presence of the artists

2:00 Welcome (Alice Smits, director Zone2Source)

2:15 Introduction to Material Flows (Ben Parry, curator and artist)

2:45 Maarten Vanden Eynde (artist)

3:05 Kevin van der Braak (artist)

3:25 Q&A

3:40 Break

4:00 Introduction UN Draft (Rosalind Malcolm, Professor of Environmental Law in the Surrey Law School, University of Surrey, UK)

4:30 Overview of toxic waste (Ravi Agarwal, researcher and artist)

5:00 Panel discussion Plastics Treaty Analysis Working Group (Elahe Rajabiani (designer at the EU Policy Lab), Graham Jeffery (Professor Arts and Media Practice, University of the West of Scotland), Caroline Knowles (Global Professorial Fellow in the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London), and Ben Parry)

6:00 Closing and drinks

Artist talk and workshop

Saturday 12, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
het Glazen Huis, Amstelpark

Center for Living Things: Wastelands Garden

Diana Lelonek will discuss her research and work on the Center for Living Things, which she founded in 2016 to focus on the relationships between mosses, plants, lichens and garbage as part of a new Wastelands Garden she has developed during Material Flows in the Amstelpark.

As part of the exhibition Material Flows: The Hidden Afterlives of Plastic Waste, this two-day symposium and workshop invites participants to critically explore the intersections of plastic pollution, colonial histories, power, people and environmental justice. Building on a long-term research project, the symposium examines how global waste flows perpetuate inequalities, focusing on the movement of European waste to Southeast Asia via the Netherlands. Bringing together researchers, artists, designers, and activists, the symposium will foster dialogue around the reframing of plastic pollution as a form of waste colonialism.

The event transforms Zone2Source’s Amstelpark pavilion into a space for ‘Plastic Dialogues’, connecting interdisciplinary perspectives to inspire and enable discussions on the environmental impacts of plastics. Participants will engage with critical questions:

How can we trace the colonial legacies and environmental injustices embedded in contemporary global waste flows?

What roles can artists, designers, and researchers play in critiquing and transforming these systems?

How do global waste streams reinforce systemic inequalities and what are their long-term impacts?

What could a world beyond plastic look like, and how might it address the historical debts of waste colonialism?

Key events include the European launch of the book, Waste Work: The Art of Survival in Dharavi, a publication reflecting on the knowledges and urban struggles shaping informal recycling work in Mumbai, India, and a session led by the Plastics Treaty Analysis Working Group. These dialogues interface with current policy developments, including the draft UN Global Plastics Treaty, which seeks to end plastic pollution through circular economy principles.

The event will begin with a tour of Material Flows exhibition with many of the artists present. Through keynote talks, panel discussions, and interactive workshops, participants will engage with the entangled histories of plastic waste and consider its toxic impacts on communities and ecosystems. This symposium offers a unique opportunity to connect interdisciplinary perspectives and reimagine pathways toward more equitable and sustainable futures.

Biographies

Rosalind Malcolm is Professor of Environmental Law in the Surrey Law School, University of Surrey, UK, specialising in how law can be used to protect the environment.  She looks at whole governance frameworks for environmental law including legislation, policy, implementation, enforcement, and compliance collaborating with social and natural scientists and engineers seeking to meet the challenge of living well within planetary boundaries. Rosalind co-directs the Governing Plastics Network (co-founded with the University of Nairobi, Kenya), and the Surrey Centre for International and Environmental Law, and practices as a barrister from Guildford Chambers.

Elahe Rajabiani is a designer at the EU Policy Lab, working at the intersection of design, science, and policy to support more creative and collaborative approaches to complex challenges. She helps policymakers and scientists think beyond convention, using arts and speculative design to reimagine future possibilities and contribute to more innovative policymaking. She has been involved in the participatory, multidisciplinary effort to harmonize waste sorting labels across the EU.

Caroline Knowles is a Global Professorial Fellow in the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London and the former director of the British Academy’s Cities and Infrastructure and Urban Infrastructures of Well-Being programmes. An urban sociologist interested in city-making and with research experience in a number of cities, she is the author of many books and papers. Flip-Flop: A Journey through Globalisation’s Backroads, published by Pluto Press (2014&2015) www.flipfloptrail.com explores the biography of flip-flops from oil to landfill.

Graham Jeffery is Professor in Arts and Media Practice and Director of the Protracted Crisis Research Centre at the University of the West of Scotland. His work spans participatory and community arts practices, creative pedagogies, and urban and community development. He has led numerous arts-based action research projects with diverse communities in different places around the world. He is co-founder of Compound 13 Lab, an experimental learning and making space working with communities in Mumbai’s informal recycling, repair and recovery industries. He is co-editor of book (Jeffery, J. Parry, B. 2024) Waste Work – The Art of Survival in Dharavi.

Maarten Vanden Eynde‘s (Belgium) practice is embedded in long term research projects that focus on numerous subjects of social and political relevance such as post-industrialism, capitalism and ecology. His work is situated exactly on the borderline between the past and the future; sometimes looking forward to the future of yesterday, sometimes looking back to the history of tomorrow.

Ravi Agarwal (India/UK) has an inter-disciplinary practice as a photographer/ artist, environmental campaigner, writer and curator. Bridging the divide between art and activism he addresses the entangled questions of nature and its futures using photography, video, text and installation. His work ranges from the long documentary to the conceptual and performative.

Ben Parry (UK) is an artist, curator and researcher working at the intersections of art, ecology, urbanism and social change. He uses art as a tool to create spaces in which to imagine alternative futures and intervenes in the everyday via small acts of resistance. His practice takes diverse forms from large scale public sculpture, site-responsive interventions, documentary and exhibition to collaborative and community-led projects in diverse contexts. His work has consistently explored themes of waste, recycling, pollution and obsolescence as both a material concern and consequence of overconsumption. In 2018 he co-designed Compound 13 Lab, in Dharavi, Mumbai; an experimental learning and maker space exploring the politics of waste, circular economies and the everyday survival of the city’s informal waste workers (www.compound13.org).

Kevin van Braak (Netherlands) works with sculpture, installations, performance and videos. In recent years, he turned his attention to the visibility and invisibility of the display of power in buildings, people, location, and artifacts and how our historical consciousness functions in relation to the history behind it. He is particularly interested in reproducing, restoring and transforming ideological images and metaphors through sculptures, installations, events and performances. Through imitation, restoration, adaptation and transformation of these relics, he tries to give their historical development and (former) ideololgical features a voice through visualisation and interpretation.