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Waste Matter - The Debris of Industrial Ruins and the Disordering of the Material World

Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, t.edensor{at}mmu.ac.uk

By exploring the disordering effects of ruination, this article critically explores the ways in which the material world is normatively ordered. The yet to be disposed of objects in ruins have been identified as ‘waste’, an assignation which testifies to the power of some to normatively order the world, but also is part of an excess, impossible to totally erase, which contains rich potential for reinterpretation and reuse because it is under-determined. Through processes of decay and non-human intervention, objects in ruins gradually transform their character and lose their discreteness, they become charged with alternative aesthetic properties, they impose their materiality upon the sensory experience of visitors, and they conjure up the forgotten ghosts of those who were consigned to the past upon the closure of the factory but continue to haunt the premises. In these ways, ruined matter offers ways for interacting otherwise with the material world.

Key Words: aesthetics • affordances • excess • ghosts • industrial ruins • materiality • order • waste

Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 10, No. 3, 311-332 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1359183505057346


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