"We urgently need to discuss forms of consumption from a collective and heterogeneous perspective"

 

The climate emergency is one of the most pressing global challenges facing the planet, and we only stand a chance of overcoming it if new perspectives are introduced that allow us to address it holistically. Mindful of this, the UOC and Sala Beckett have organized a programme of events called "Planet Person. The Limits of the Climate Crisis". Running until 3 April, this interdisciplinary programme seeks to promote the idea that it is possible to reimagine a more liveable and shared planet. One of its guest speakers is Blanca Callén, course instructor at the UOC Faculty of Arts and Humanities and one of the driving forces behind the Restarters BCN project, an association that promotes the reappropriation of technological knowledge and alternatives to planned obsolescence. We sat down to talk to her about material cultures, community responses and ecofeminist approaches to the climate crisis.

 

The climate emergency is one of the most pressing global challenges facing the planet, and we only stand a chance of overcoming it if new perspectives are introduced that allow us to address it holistically. Mindful of this, the UOC and Sala Beckett have organized a programme of events called "Planet Person. The Limits of the Climate Crisis". Running until 3 April, this interdisciplinary programme seeks to promote the idea that it is possible to reimagine a more liveable and shared planet. One of its guest speakers is Blanca Callén, course instructor at the UOC Faculty of Arts and Humanities and one of the driving forces behind the Restarters BCN project, an association that promotes the reappropriation of technological knowledge and alternatives to planned obsolescence. We sat down to talk to her about material cultures, community responses and ecofeminist approaches to the climate crisis.

The programme is organized around several key themes. Firstly, I think it aims to connect approaches or forms of analysis that don't usually go together. The point is to connect different ways of approaching and acting against the climate crisis. And that's why it includes plays, dramatized conversations, debates, round tables, and so on. The framework of the proposal is to rethink the future and community in a time of eco-social crisis. It seeks to rethink the limits and hopes of possible futures on a finite planet, as well as the life we share with other beings. Opportunities for action and ways of life will be explored. The goal is to find out what horizons can open up in the middle of it all.

What we want to explore is how to live with others. Historically, what is non-human has been kept away, othered, at a distance from us, or we have had a utilitarian relation to it. The table will re-examine the ethics of how we relate to things that are not human. Rocío Thovar, for instance, studies animal ethics and climate change, while Paula Bruna, who is an environmentalist and artist, will discuss how we can design lifestyles that put plants at the centre. As for me, I consider what has historically been considered inert: objects. The purpose of the round table is to look at everything that has been left out of the human category. We live in relationships of interdependence, of mutual eco-dependence, and we need to consider futures, forms of coexistence and an ethic of relationships that include this diversity and heterogeneity of entities beyond what is human.

We definitely like to look at our navel. We think that our end as humanity will be the end of the world, but it may not be so. Other worlds will surely arise without us, just as we were not here millions of years ago. It's a mistake to focus so much on this purely human concern because, paradoxically, it's this anthropocentrism that has brought us to where we are. We must consider the consequences of our actions and at the same time highlight the fact that anthropocentrism is a fallacy, a mirage. As human beings we do not support ourselves, because we are dependent on other non-human beings.

The key part of my job is precisely to critique and question the dichotomy between the living and the inert. If we look a little deeper into time, we can see that what we consider inert today is actually the result of a process starting with organic and living things. For example, plastics in our computers come from oil, and oil is derived from the remains of animals and plants that lived millions of years ago. So, there are issues to be looked at, such as the temporal or spatial dimension we use. And when we are aware that what we consider to be an inert object is really nothing more than the continuation of certain organisms through time, the connection between the present and the past or future becomes much more evident, and therefore it allows us to have a much more inclusive view of who we are and what the planet is. This also challenges certain utilitarian views where objects or things are mere resources for our benefit that we can use at will.

I worked on a project called "Políticas de la chatarra" (Scrap policies), which explored informal responses from citizens and organizations to the problem of e-waste. There are a number of regulations attempting to regulate it, but there are many shortcomings. The percentage of e-waste that is recycled is very low compared to the amount we generate, and in fact, it is the type of waste that has grown the most in recent years. This helped me, for example, to map and identify different initiatives that, in dialogue with formal initiatives or with the waste collection system, could result in much more efficient waste treatment and waste reduction or at least make people aware of the different forms of consumption. In another project I worked on, called "Objections", we explored the reasons and situations that led people to get rid of everyday objects. We tried to discover why some links with the objects that make up our day-to-day ecosystem fail and why some remain. And we saw how the ability to rematerialize and establish meaningful relationships with the objects around us can help avoid generating more waste and refuse.

Restarters BCN is a really practical project that came out of working with e-waste and repair cultures. We are organizing what we call "restart parties", which are free public events where volunteers help participants to repair their own appliances. As in previous projects, there is an ethical question in the background about how to live with other non-human entities, in this case electronic objects, in a finite world in crisis, to get to more liveable places. Repairing something has an immediate environmental effect – how much e-waste or CO2 emissions can we avoid – and economic benefits because we save money. These are the most obvious, but there are many more effects. The events have a teaching aspect to them: people learn why something is broken, expand their knowledge of design, and build relationships of trust and shared generosity that also repair the social and community fabric. Our motto is that we not only repair appliances, but our relationships with them, too.

It is related in several ways. Historically and politically, women and the tasks we have carried out have belonged to a kind of sphere of the other, subaltern, submissive and not legitimized or socially recognized. Feminists in economics and the ethics of care speak of the economy as an iceberg, where the tip – the part we can see – is the work considered productive, that is socially and economically recognized and carried out by masculine or masculinized figures. But for this to be sustainable, underwater there is a huge amount of unrecognized and unpaid work, usually done by women, feminized or racialized figures, and so on. Inert objects are part of the other that is not legitimized or recognized as having agency, and yet it is necessary for our existence and our subsistence. For the sustenance of life, it is essential to recognize and put at the forefront all these tasks and all these invisible agents.

Speaking of objects, I think it is urgent to address the debate on forms of consumption. What do we consider necessary or sufficient to live? I think we should consider our real needs, and when we put new needs on the table, we should not put humans or individual lives at the centre. These questions need to be approached from a collective and heterogeneous perspective and go beyond what's human. Another important issue is to rethink our knowledge of materials. We used to be closer to the processes and forms of production, and to materials, and this gave us a more sensitive and rich knowledge of the world around us. Now all this sensitive and material knowledge is outsourced. We do not know whether something is of good quality or not, what is good or bad fabric, or how and under what conditions something has been made. It's very urgent. We need to get closer to the production process and acknowledge its consequences and take responsibility for what we do.