“In this presentation, I discuss Single Stream, a video work I made with Paweł Wojtasik and Ernst Karel. Single Stream is a visual and sonic exploration inside a recycling facility, which ultimately aims to shed light on our contemporary culture of waste. Through the presentation of short excerpts from the work and discussion of its production process, I bring out the ways in which the video formally engages with the questions of technology, materiality and temporality that are raised by processes of recycling. Bringing together Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious with a discussion of the social unconscious and the politics of (in)visibility, this presentation reflects on the larger political economy of waste — and political ecology of video production and circulation — in the 21st century.” Toby Lee