La vita delle macchine. Improvvisazione materiale creativa attraverso trasformazioni urbane a Barcellona-22@

Abstract

This paper refers to the birth of the recycling and domestic collection of electronic waste in Barcelona as a process of both urban innovation and social transformation. It is explained as an event that reveals the vital transformative capacity of matter in our societies and in our cities. With this goal, it makes use of Graham Harman’s critique of Sociology of Associations to advance towards the proposal of New Materialisms. Innovation is expressed as a production made by heterogeneous entities within an improvised process. In it, human and non-human entities interact and produce differential transformations, linked by a sort of “corporal commitment”. The intrinsic qualities of the material show themselves as creative resistances. These materials become intuitive actors in intra-action with elements of the social, giving rise -from 2015- to a new sensibility of the city towards electronic household waste.