Anticipating Ruinations: Ecologies of ‘Make Do’ and ‘Left With’

Abstract

This article examines sites of ruinations that include zones of radioactive decay, ‘illegal’ housing projects, electromagnetic emissions, and e-waste dismantling and metal extraction. These sites have stories of people who are anticipating ruinations such as dreading a nuclear fallout or apartment demolition that has not yet happened. The article argues that ruination is an explicitly political process and exploring relations between humans who are living in ruins with the objects/things they are left with, out there, could lead to questioning power relations – both state power and infrastructural power. Borrowing from research methods such as media archaeology, media geology and media anthropology, the article points to generative connections between mediations of ruins and media ruins (consisting of media objects/infrastructures that are themselves marked by disruptive materialities and (un)planned obsolescence). While approaching media ruins, interrogating the politics embedded within research methods would help in understanding ruination itself as a political project.

Utilization of E-Waste as a Concrete Mixture for Infrastructural Buildings

“…If they sell the property, they'll be compelled to purchase a new one. E-wastes get a boost [10]. India, for example, is a developing country.…”

Cloud ruins: Ericsson's Vaudreuil-Dorion data centre and infrastructural abandonment

“…The premise there is that the materiality of digital objects leaks in many directions and concretises in formations such as electronic waste, new chemical fossilisation in the Earth subsurface, or new recompositions of minerals all the while being abstracted into algorithms, data, or visual imagery. Ruination with digital technologies takes in these cases the meaning of the ruined health and environment for those workers in the Global South who daily confront and inhabit the growing piles of dissolving electronics, batteries, gases, and plastics that used to compose into digital objects, but in their discarded, devalued afterlife get shipped to backyards or factories where they are left to degrade or make up for new forms of living (Cubitt, 2017;Gabrys, 2013;Maxwell & Miller, 2012;Mukherjee, 2017).…”

“…But just as industrial ruination emerged from restructuring of the global economy, including through automation and digitalisation, we need to account not only for the afterlives of these environments, but also for the new meanings of ruins within cycles of capital accumulation that may still feel here and now, including financial (Kitchin et al, 2014) and, increasingly, digital ruination. What is at stake is not necessarily understandings of past and futures, but continuing strategies and practices of meaning (and value)-making in the present that constitute the endurance of both localised relations to infrastructures and more large-scale determinations of power (e.g., Mukherjee, 2017;Stoler, 2008). Seemingly restoring the value of abandoned factories and urban infrastructure, global tech corporations emerged from within these past ruined landscapes with the promise of renewed local development by either converting parts of the derelict built environment into data centres, or by building new imposing data storage buildings that would tell the story of a future prosperity with data and digital communications (Jacobson & Hogan, 2019;Johnson, 2019;Vonderau, 2017).…”

Orégano em pizza e ciclovias em São Paulo possuem algo em comum?

“…Infraestruturas também são constituídas pelo arranjo de interesses específicos, políticas e materialidades e estão repletas de paradoxos, ou seja, elas podem ser fluídas e transparentes para um determinado grupo e ao mesmo tempo ser uma barreira intransponível para outros (HOWE et al, 2016;LARKIN, 2013). Além disso, as infraestruturas estão em estado quase constante de ruptura, exigindo trabalhos significativos de manutenção e reparação para funcionarem (HARVEY & KNOX, 2012;LARKIN, 2013;URETA, 2014), ou a manutenção nunca é feita ou a infraestrutura nunca teve suas obras concluídas, mas por falta de alternativas ainda há usuários dessas infraestruturas (MUKHERJEE, 2017;YARROW, 2017). E ainda, infraestruturas podem ser "sistemas 27 Para saber mais sobre o transporte por helicópteros em São Paulo ver: (CWERNER, 2006;CWERNER, 2009).…”

“…Essa ideia tem sido questionada principalmente por autores que escrevem sobre infraestrutura no Sul global, consolidando a noção de que aqui são mais frequentes os casos em que as redes são mais falhas e inacabadas. Outros autores já assumem que todas as infraestruturas estão em estado quase constante de ruptura, exigindo trabalhos significativos de manutenção e reparação para funcionarem (HARVEY & KNOX, 2012;LARKIN, 2008LARKIN, , 2013URETA, 2014) e com frequência no Sul global a manutenção nunca é feita ou a infraestrutura nunca teve suas obras concluídas, mas por falta de alternativas ainda há usuários dessas infraestruturas (MUKHERJEE, 2017;YARROW, 2017). Essas perspectivas dos ESCT junto de minhas próprias frustações com o sistema de transportes urbano, não apenas do município de São Paulo, pois sou residente do interior, mas como usuária de transporte público, ciclista e pedestre de forma geral, foram as principais motivações para a escolha do tema.…”