Lines that do not speak : Multispecies hospitality and bug-writing

The article, situated at the crossroads of hospitality studies, human–animal studies and writing studies, offers a more-than-human perspective on hospitality by exploring the book The Language of Bugs (2018) by Chinese book designer and artist Zhu Yingchun and its crafting process. In existing scholarship, hospitality has been mainly considered in anthropocentric terms. The article suggests that the multispecies relations that unfolded between the artist, his garden and bugs not only unsettle and disrupt this anthropocentric bias but also complicate the predominant dyadic understanding of hospitality: their hospitable entanglement needs to be analysed as a triadic configuration, where there are no fixed positions, but each member may in its turn be placed in the position of the host/guest/third. Ultimately, the paradox of the hospitality offered by the artist to the bugs is that he was only possible to welcome their visitation by endangering the life or wellbeing of his other guests, the plants. The article also highlights the non-phonemic, material and performative ‘asemic’ aspects of writing by considering writing in terms of traces and lines and argues that bug-writing has great theoretical potential for liberating the notion of writing from its anthropo-, phono and logocentric subordination.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Biowaste as fluid matter : Valuing biogas and biofertilisers as assets in the Finnish biogas sector

In this article, we examine the effort of turning biowaste into an asset in the everyday practices of Finnish biogas plants. Drawing from social scientific waste studies as well as new materialist and posthumanist approaches, we approach biowaste as unruly, fluid matter inclined to leak and spill over and capable of affecting the possibilities of valuing it. Our analysis shows how biowaste resists the efforts to turn it into completely homogenous mass; how this mass has to be taken care of over the production process; and how it is not always clear whether the practices produce valuable assets or problematic excess. We argue that to better understand the possibilities for a transition towards a circular economy, it is important to acknowledge that the processing and valuing of waste does not offer complete control over it, but also requires careful alignment with waste material that does not always act as wished.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

The gift of waste : The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers

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The decaying stuff of the Anthropocene : exploring contemporary trashscapes through ruination

In this article, we take the notion of ruination beyond crumbling built structures and use it to explore contemporary trashscapes. With the waste produced by humanity scaling up to encompass the entire planet, we examine life with and in the ruins of the Anthropocene, where there is no Away to which the rejectamenta could be expelled and thus set apart from humans. On the one hand, we scrutinise waste as matter in a ruined state, subject to and resulting from a process of ruination; waste is a trace of an anterior presence that remains and contin-ues to haunt us. On the other hand, we argue that collective wastage is turning the natural environment itself into ruins and landscapes into trashscapes. Towards the end of the article, we also stress the disruptive qualities of ruination and decay and discuss the renewed sensibilities evoked by waste. A life with waste in a world of Anthropocenic ruination amounts to a life that is not in complete control of itself but rather is inextricably entangled with otherness.Peer reviewe

A User-Centered Lens into Digital Excess : Exploring the Superfluity and Environmental Burden of the Digital World

null ; Conference date: 14-06-2023 Through 15-06-2023This article seeks to take a new view on the environmental burden of information and communication technology through the concept of digital excess. Our notion of digital excess draws from Georges Batailleʼs argument that the main problem of any economy is excess rather than scarcity. We take a user-centric lens into this concept and discuss various aspects of our digital lives that could be perceived not to carry meaningful value but appear as wasteful and superAluous, while also harming individuals, society, or the planet. We provide examples from digital media services where digital excess may be regarded as, for example, accumulation of self-created content with redundant copies or inattentive consumption of highbandwidth streaming services. In consonance with related work in the Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction community, we encourage follow-up empirical investigations of the practical manifestations of this concept, which could help to further understand, problematize, and possibly also mitigate the growing energy use of ICT. For the design of digital services, focusing on digital excess offers a lens through which designers could simultaneously optimize multiple quality criteria that conventionally require trade-offs (e.g., environmental sustainability vs. lively user experience vs. economic viability)