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INTEREST FORM: Critical Waste Lab

Critical Waste Lab is a four-week online seminar on waste in all its forms: what counts as waste, who makes it, who handles it, where it goes, and how it shows up in our own lives. Drawing on 15 years of work across philosophy, ecology, and materiality, we’ll examine waste through policy and place, and through imagined and embodied realities. We’ll follow it from the first city drains to the junkyard orbiting overhead: how cities learned to hide their trash, what different cultures count as waste, who handles it, and how a building, a meal, or even an hour of scrolling becomes waste.

Expect lectures, discussion, readings, film excerpts, and hands-on practice, from compost to dye. Each week you’ll look at your own relationship to waste, through a waste log, small experiments, and conversation.

75 minutes, once a week, pay what you want. Sessions will be recorded for anyone who can’t make it live. Tell me a little about you and when you’re free, and I’ll pick the time that works for most people.

Name

Email

Where are you based, and what time zone are you in?

What days and times usually work for you, in your own time zone?

(e.g. weekday evenings, Sunday mornings)

Would you prefer to join live, watch recordings, or either?

A
B
C

Which parts of waste are you most curious about?

(choose as many as applicable)
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N

If answered other above, please elaborate:

What’s your relationship to waste right now?

(e.g. “I feel guilty about my trash,” “I work in it,” “I’ve never thought about it”)

What’s one thing you throw away, or avoid looking at, that you’d like to look at differently?

What’s pulling you toward this class? What are you hoping to learn or take away?

Do you have access to a kitchen or a garden?

What would you be willing to pay?

Pay what you want. Any amount works, and no explanation is needed.

Anything I should know for access or accommodations?

How did you hear about this?

Instructor bio

Hi, I’m Shivani Lakshmi Aysola: an urban planner and environmental researcher with parallel lives as a professional Bharatanatyam dancer and filmmaking teacher. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, speak six languages, and have lived, worked, and taught on four continents, but have only been bitten by a monkey once.

My friends started calling me “Garbage Girl” in 2023, when I was jumping between deconstruction policy in New York State and fieldwork on construction and demolition waste in Bangalore, but I’ve been focused on circularity for 15 years, be it through food waste, regenerative agriculture, or natural building. Most recently I taught Radical Trash Studies in person at the Strother School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn.

I studied Renaissance art and architecture at the Università degli Studi di Firenze, and hold a B.A. in Politics and a B.A. in Italian Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Master of Regional Planning from Cornell University, with a concentration in natural resource management. As founding principal of Shamba-la Studios, I lead carbon-positive design, community-led planning, and creative placemaking in coastal cities across the U.S. and Kenya, linking economic, ecological, and educational development.