10. e-Waste Peep Show

The following chapter by Lai-Tze Fan is a critical and creative reflection that describes the research-creation project e-Waste Peep Show; or, on Seeing and not Wanting to be Seen (EWPS). Since research-creation as an academic practice challenges scholars to merge creative approaches in various disciplines and to apply theory to practice, it allows scholarship to address twenty-first-century issues in innovative ways. Constructed as an art installation, EWPS features original footage of an e-waste (electronic waste) plant in Northern Hong Kong through a peephole in its walls. The camera captures a masked woman taking apart mounds of technological trash. Suddenly, she throws technological debris at me: don't look at me; don't film here. In this chapter, the author describes the process of constructing the installation such that spectators can experience the act of peeping onto sites and sights that they are not ‘supposed’ to see. The three parts of the paper describe the fragments that came together to produce the research-creation project: first, the author discusses the toxicity of e-waste and the exploitation of e-waste labourers, with a focus on East, Southeast and South Asia; second, she describes the fieldwork that I completed in December 2017 to collect video footage at an e-waste plant in Hong Kong; third, she details the creation process of the installation and the intended experience for the spectator-as-user. In doing so, this chapter aligns creative methods in sustainable research with an ethical intervention into global technological consumerism.