Wasteland Festival

collective.wasteland is an interdisciplinary platform and festival based in the Netherlands exploring the material, spatial, and political dimensions of waste. Through long-term research, site-responsive programming, and public engagement, the collective investigates how systems of discard, extraction, and reuse shape cities, landscapes, and imaginaries.

Founded in 2022, collective.wasteland curates Wasteland Festival - a nomadic, month-long programme that takes place across urban contexts in collaboration with local communities, institutions, and artistic networks. By bringing together artists, designers, architects, researchers, and publics, Wasteland seeks to foreground waste not merely as a material by-product, but as a condition - one that offers critical insights into how value is constructed, how systems are maintained, and how the built environment is formed.

Rooted in Rotterdam, a city defined by port logistics, land reclamation, and infrastructural choreography, Wasteland Festival 2025: Out of Sight builds interdisciplinary alliances to challenge the invisibility of waste and question its implications across scale - from the domestic to the planetary. Through exhibitions, lectures, dinners, workshops, and fieldwork, the project opens space for new forms of architectural, ecological, and civic imagination.