IAS Book Launch: Wastiary

Published by UCL Press, Wastiary, or Bestiary of Waste, is a creative exercise that occupies letters, numbers, and symbols of Western academic language to compose a list of 35 short entries on the uncomfortable but pressing topic of waste in the contemporary world. The collection is richly illustrated with artwork, photography, collage and mixed media.

The book is a heterodox compendium of ‘beasts of waste’, playfully re-imagining the medieval treatise on various kinds of animal. It conveys the message that various forms of waste and pollution have achieved a beast-like or untameable quality, at times pungently transferring to considerations of ‘the human’, or humans treated as waste.

The book is edited by Michael Hennessy Picard (International Environmental Law, University of Edinburgh), Albert Brenchat-Aguilar (The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) Dr Timothy Carroll (UCL Anthropology), Professor Jane Gilbert (UCL Medieval Literature and Critical Theory) and Professor Nicola Miller (Institute of Advanced Studies and UCL History).

The programme of the evening will begin with a brief introduction to the book by Michael Picard. Short presentations by five of the contributors - Pushpa Arabindoo, Miranda Griffin, Elaine Cloutman-Green, Tatiana Thieme, and Adriana Massida and Hanna Baumann - will follow and the formal part will end with a short conversation between Jane Gilbert and the illustrator of the book Nina Mathijsen.

The event will be followed by a reception and the opportunity to purchase the book for £ 20 (cash payments only!)

Three chapters - X for Xenophobia, Y for Yawning and Yearning and Z for Zero Waste - have been published in advance on the IAS online review Think Pieces. You can read them here.