This article discusses the feasibility of the Museum of Waste (MoW), a virtual museum that explores the residues, excesses, failures, and escalated emergencies of contemporary capitalism through case studies located within the US, but shaped by inextricably global processes. The Museum offers a way to understand the inescapability and non-exteriority of waste: a new horizon of toxic experience that conjoins the human and the non-human, nature and culture. Exhibitions in the MoW are organized around three major themes that rethink the present through waste processes: capital, ecology, and sovereignty. A concluding Zone of Recommendations provides an opportunity to reflect on the knowledge gained from the immersive experience of waste analytics.

 

*Part of the Trash Issue