6-4-2023
I am fascinated by the discarded but potentially working equipment I find in the waste, specifically media technology and objects with personal markings. They carry stories that speak to my imagination and make me think of the lives of their previous owners, captured in a faded sticker or tangled magnetic cassette tape. For my co-workers, equipment is not so exciting. They see it every day. It excites them more when they encounter objects that are out of the ordinary. Today I saw Frits and Valentijn hunched around a small statue of a monkey that someone fished out of a bin. It was made of hard resin and had a cable dangling out of its belly. They were trying to decide what species it was. Frits said ‘baboon’, but Valentijn looked sceptical. I joined the conversation and suggested ‘macaque’, to which Valentijn agreed. Frits took out his phone to google different monkey species. We didn’t find the correct answer but realised it was neither a baboon nor a macaque. Other ‘interesting’ things found today were a pink-green cap with the text ‘come to the forest party’, a can of air refreshener scented ‘spring breeze’ that Martin sprayed around his workplace, the artificial smell contrasted nicely with the e-waste environment, and a huge artificial taxidermy deer mount with a motorized mouth.