The #InvisibleRecyclers Campaign

BUILDING A VISUAL ARCHIVE OF INFORMAL WASTE NETWORKS

MUSINGS ON WASTE (Part 3)

We’re excited to announce the launch of Kabadiwalla Connect’s latest initiative #InvisibleRecyclers, an Instagram campaign aimed at making informal waste networks more visible to the public. Through #InvisibleRecyclers, we want to celebrate the services of the city’s scrap-dealers and rag-pickers in recycling waste. A team of volunteers from C.A.R.E, the Eco Club from Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering, walked the city on April 4th 2015 to take pictures of scrap-dealers (kabadiwallas), itinerant buyers (raddiwallas) and waste-pickers, which were then uploaded on Instagram and aggregated on the Kabadiwalla Connect website.

The goal: creating visibility

Everyday, Chennai generates around 4500 tons of waste – which is dumped in landfills – and this statistic is set to exponentially grow over the years. The informal waste sector performs a vital service by keeping waste out of the landfill, and sending it to be recycled instead.

However, despite this, popular perceptions of the informal waste sector in Indian cities remain negative because of their association with waste. This isn’t the case across the globe, though – for instance, in Brazil, the government has legally acknowledged the services of informal players and implemented programs that incorporate them into formal waste management mechanisms. They are also celebrated by the public because of the work they do.

The campaign aims to create a sense of legitimacy around the players in this sector – scrap-dealers, rag-pickers and itinerant buyers, to name a few. Keeping this goal in mind, #InvisibleRecyclers was designed to create a visual archive of informal waste workers, and capture a sense of how they function.

Piloting the campaign

Around 40 volunteers from C.A.R.E spent a day in the city identifying and visually documenting scrap-dealers, rag-pickers, itinerant buyers and even communities who recycle, which were later uploaded on Instagram. The volunteers collected around 400 pictures.

Pictures that volunteers took over the weekend can be found at www.kabadiwallaconnect.in/invisiblerecyclers.

While the campaign has been launched in Chennai, we are looking to expand it to other Indian cities as well.

Some of the pictures taken as part of the campaign

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Inviting community collaborators

If you’d like to contribute to #InvisibleRecyclers, here’s how:

Take a picture of scrap-dealers, waste-pickers, or anyone else in the informal waste ecosystem.
Hashtag #InvisibleRecyclers, #KabadiwallaConnect & #[your_city]. Add a description.
Keep your location services on. This helps curate photos from different cities around the world.
Post it on Instagram. Watch it come up on our site! Share this page on your social networks!

MUSINGS ON WASTE (Part 2)

MUSINGS ON WASTE (Part 1)

Concerts, Dance, Movement, Theatre, Walks Scroll

Do send us a Facebook invite/link if you would like to put up your event on such a scroll next week. Currently it covers events happening in Chennai. We are open to know what happens in the rest of the world.

Celebrating Resistance: An Exhibition to Remember Three Decades of Struggle in Bhopal

Yes, Warren Anderson lived a full life of 92 years, escaping every law suit or call or cry possible. He probably had a wonderful memorial service organized by friends, family and colleagues. He will probably go down in corporate text books as the most resilient force against human rights movements as The Escapist, The Illusionist…

We can’t forget him. But, why does any struggle that questions economic growth, foreign investment, environmental degradation, or human right violations need to be part of our memory? Can’t we forget it as just another disaster? The thing is, these issues are not just happening in Bhopal, Cuddalore, Idinthakarai, or any one place. It is not a localized thing…

So The Remember Bhopal Trust inspired by the three decades of struggle by the Bhopal survivors, want to travel around the country, collect stories from similar struggles and weave it all in to a permanent museum in Bhopal.

As a start, from this Sunday, 9th of November 2014 to next Saturday the 15th of November 2014, in Chennai, the Trust has organized an exhibition of the lived memories of the disaster and the struggle that has followed.

Check out the event on Facebook. Join, invite, and go. Read and learn about the struggle at Bhopal.net

Can we crowdsource our memories of the city?

Fellowship Opportunity – The Urban History Project

“Neighbourhoods constantly change, and this change is a result of many forces that interact, and often resist each other to create the city that we see today…We hope that through granular narratives of people’s experience of place-making in Chennai, we gain insight into how we can build a more inclusive, and supportive city.”

Let’s start with Chennai…

The Old Mount Road. Source: The Hindu

The families and students of 1965 remember the Buhari’s at Mount Road, not the expensive chain of restaurants today, dipping chicken in chilli powder and frying it in deep boiling oil to create Chicken 65. What is the use of such a memory other than inducing an association or feeling in an individual(s)? Just a year before this Bob Dylan sang on American television sets The Times They Are a-Changing…

The million plans of restoration/beautification try to make Chennai a mega/metro/singara/swachch/industrial/growing city that arrogantly ignores the lives here. You and I are meant to move with the times that are a-changing. You or I might not own a strip of land here or have the status of power to make direct changes, but we do have our memories and our lives. We are introducing you to a new group of people who want to gather these memories and aspirations of our lives in this place and channel it for constructing Supportive Cities.

This fellowship opportunity is for any writer/filmmaker/photographer/historian or anyone who does not mind being unpaid in Chennai, while they set out on a six month journey to collect, collate and curate such memories. They promise bi-weekly training and a hand-held process that will end with a public exhibition at Dakshina Chitra. We think any student looking for internships or some experience should jump at this opportunity.

Register here NOW

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IDINTHAKARAI, KOODANKULAM UPDATE. 09 SEPTEMBER 2012

2:33 pm – Nity just spoke to a protester who’s at the siege site (east end wall of the nuke plant) on Idinthakarai seashore. There are atleast 8000 people at the siege site now facing severe weather. Drinking water is not available at the site but arrangements are being made to arrange for the same. The protesters seek the support of all groups and organisations to organise solidarity events and meetings all over India.

12:48 pm – Tirunelveli SP Vijeyandra Bidari has reached the spot. The police are right next to the protesters now. Protesters say that the SP is making some announcement on the megaphone but they are not able to hear anything

12:30 pm – Thousand people from Periya thaalai village who were on their way to Idinthakarai were stopped by the police. The people are now on their way to attend a hunger protest held in Pani maya madha church in Tuticorin. Fishermen from Tuticorin are already on a hunger protest at the church. The police is not allowing protestors to head towards Idinthakarai to participate in the protest.

(CHENNAI SOLIDARITY GROUP)

Recent photographs from Idinthakarai, Koodankulam

Amirtharaj Stephen shares with us some of his photographs taken during the last few months covering events regarding the Anti-Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant Protests.

Click on any thumbnail to view Gallery

Senior Citizen and senior protestor Chinna Thangam on hunger strike for the third day protesting against the commissioning of Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant. Chinna Thangam is one of the over 300 women who are on hunger strike from May 3.

Villagers from Idinthakarai, Koodankulam

Protesters gathered in Idinthakarai, Koodankulam

Road blocks placed by villagers in Idinthakarai, Koodankulam to delay the entry of the police force into the village

Sack bunkers built by police force in Idinthakarai, Koodankulam

Police force in Idinthakarai, Koodankulam

Anti-KKNPP protesters gathered at Idinthakarai, Koodankulam

Hundreds of villagers in Koothankuli gather in solidarity with Anti-KKNPP protests in Idinthakarai, Koodankulam

Hundreds of villagers in Kootapuli join protest march in solidarity with Anti-KKNPP protests in Idinthakarai, Koodankulam

UPDATE FROM DIANUKE.ORG

With the Idinthakarai-based anti-Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) protestors gearing-up for their ultimate agitation to ensure the permanent closure of the ready-to-be-commissioned nuclear power programme within a next few days, Collector R. Selvaraj has extended the prohibitory orders promulgated under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code to seven km from the KKNPP site.

The announcement was made last night shortly after 10 p.m. that enabled the officials to implement the orders from the existing 2-km radius from KKNPP site to 7 km. It will be in force till 6 p.m. June 7. After the district administration received intelligence reports that a few thousands of protestors, mostly from coastal hamlets, might block the roads leading to the KKNPP site and lay siege to the nuclear power project site, the existing prohibitory orders was extended up to 7 km under which Idinthakarai, the protest hub, also falls.

Additional reinforcements are being rushed to Kudankulam and its surroundings. Armed Reserve Police, 100 personnel from Tamil Nadu Commando Force and 100 personnel from Tamil Nadu Special Task Force had been deployed till Wednesday evening.

KOODANKULAM SPEAKS – Bookmark this page to follow Dianuke.org’s live stream from Idinthakarai and find other links relating to anti nuclear protests in Koodankulam and other parts of the world.

Stuck to the busy street.

This artist Chris Nixon was asked to create a black and white typographical poster based on the city for the London Design Week exhibition. After realising that a city was made of people, the artist wanted the people of London to have an input on the design itself; their actions to manipulate how the design would be formed. Participatory communication, use of space, and sole prints!

Rainy Pink Congo

Irish photographer Richard Mosse created a highly unusual look at the country by going to the remote far east of Congo and shooting his series Infra with recently discontinued Kodak infrared film. Kodak’s Aerochrome color infrared film was developed by the U.S. military in the 1940s for camouflage detection. It reveals a part of the light spectrum that is invisible to the human eye, producing a unique color palette that artists, like Jimi Hendrixand Frank Zappa, would use for a psychedelic effect on album covers years later.

This series draw from a different palette of colours, literally. Using recently discontinued Kodak infrared film, his photographs turn the vegetation of the eastern Congo into jarring magenta, while the soldiers’ uniforms go purple. This Aerochrome infrared film was developed by the US military in the 1940s to detect camouflage and to reveal part of the spectrum of light the human eye cannot see. But where this technology was invented to detect enemy positions in the underbrush, Mosse uses it to make us call into question pictures we thought we understood. These are the images we take for granted from Congo: the ruthless militia commander, the rape victim, an unwitting peasant. But in Mosse’s pictures, Congo’s photographic clichés represent the conflict with an invisible spectrum of infrared light, he pushes us to see this tragedy in new ways.

I went to interview a militia commander in the eastern highlands. When I asked if I could take his picture, he shook his head. “You’re going to take my picture to Europe and show it to other white people. What do they know about my life?” He said they would think he was some kind of macaque, a forest monkey. Richard Mosse

The Boombox Project

On the heels of the graffiti renaissance comes a vibrant look at an old-school icon that figured prominently in the hip-hop, rock & roll, and punk movements of the 1970s and 80s. The Boombox Project by Lyle Owerko, a photographer, features contemporary fine art portraits of an array of vintage boomboxes, as well as scores of documentary photographs of the people who brought the boombox movement to life back in the day. This short film directed by Paul Stone and presented by Dropculture.com is a conversation with Lyle Owerko and the project.

English

2011, 7mins 50s

The Ocean – Above and Below

Lord Byron said it best, says Umeed Mistry, a chronicler of the life and mysteries of the ocean, like Better Photography tags him. When he was sixteen, he dove into the ocean enveloping Maldives for the very first time. Ever since, he has been in love with the sea and the camera.

After watching Mickey Smith’s self-potrait Dark Side of the Lens, our flat-mate and accomplice at Chai Kadai, has tricked us into loving, much like he does, exploring the works of underwater explorers. We’ve never dived into the ocean, the furthest we’ve been is a few hours of snorkeling. The idea of diving into a hostile and quite an alien environment comes from a passion to explore Nature’s weird and beautiful ways of expressing itself with life.

For some of us (lazy bones) it might take an entire day’s convincing before we walk to the beach right next to our house. But for these divers, once they’ve done it for the first time, it’s an inseparable love affair; like James Cameron said at a TED Conference:

Much like Mickey Smith or James Cameron, Umeed chooses the camera lens to explore the interconnecting mysteries of these worlds. In his collection two worlds, he says:

This year, Neil Ever Osborne’s path-breaking documentary Witness: Defining Conservation Photography, put in perspective the actual work of those like Umeed Mistry. In the past decade, the gradual evolution of nature photography in to conservation photography has formed a global community of these artistes and explorers who have realised that their responsibility begins after tripping the shutter. Though, photography as a conservation tool has been there for many years, it is only now that conservation photography is being developed into a unique genre and field of its own for study and work. It is the process of story-telling — giving Nature a voice to speak to current day society. Umeed Mistry signs off in Better Photography with this same hope: