After Trash? From Underground Sex Cults to Surveillance Theatre

My paper explores how trash, waste and excess have been taken up as a queer methodology in the Trash cinema of John Waters and movies of American Visual Artist Ryan Trecartyn.

Using Jeffrey Sconce’s concept of ‘para-cinema’ in media studies to describe the underground practices of trash cinema, I map out a shift in intent, purpose and status of queer trash in networked cultures. In doing so, I aim to pose questions about the renewed uptake of the trashy, low-fi, and the poor in surveillance capitalism.