All That Is Solid

As technological progress pushes forward in the west, enormous piles of obsolete computers are thrown away and recycled. Pushed out of sight and sent to the coast of West Africa, these computers are thrown into waste grounds such as Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana. On arrival, the e-waste is recuperated by young men, who break and burn the plastic casings in order to extract the precious metals contained within. Eventually the metals are sold, melted and reformed into new objects to be sold – it is a strange system of recycling, a kind of reverse neo-colonial mining, whereby the African is searching for mineral resources in the materials of Europe. By showing these heavy processes, the video highlights the importance of dispelling the capitalist myth of the immateriality of new technology to reveal the mineral weight with which the Cloud is grounded to its earthly origins.