Research Clusters
Arts Cluster
Disrupting established disciplinary practices can create novel environments of new or alternative knowledge production. Through our Artist in Residency programme, the Arts Cluster facilitates creative exchange between arts practices, humanities, and social sciences to rethink our relationship to single-use medical plastics.
Deconstructing Devices Cluster
The waste generated by single-use medical devices is complex, involving not just the discarded device, but also packaging, manufacturing, and distribution. Waste impacts vary by materials, additives, and disposal methods. The Deconstructing Devices Cluster explores quantifying and visualizing this waste alongside the effect on human and planetary health.
Hospital Cluster
The hospital is a principal site where disposability in healthcare is consumed and produced. The Hospital Cluster explores the transforming spaces, labour practices, and supply chains that shape and are shaped by the widespread use of single-use plastics in healthcare.
Incinerating Cluster
The incinerating of medical waste results in the production of toxic and hazardous emissions and residues that damage human and planetary health. The Incinerating Cluster examines the ascendence of incineration as the preferred method of waste disposal and need, urgency, and viability of alternative methods.
Making, Marketing, Moving Cluster
The history of medicine reveals how the rise of disposability was linked to notions of hygiene and convenience. The Making, Marketing, Moving Cluster documents the creation and promotion of disposability in healthcare, creating an archive of R&D, production, regulation, advertising, promotion, purchasing, and dissemination of single-use plastics in healthcare.
Re-use Cluster
The re-use of medical device requires an elaborate material and logistic infrastructure. The Re-use Cluster examines the history and present practices of washing, sterilising, repairing, tracking, and distributing medical devices in hospitals, clinics, and private practices.
