What does it mean for a Black woman today to “contemplate the collapse of the world”? From her perspective, what is collapsing? When systemic racism takes the form of an ecology that is still Western and so certain of its own validity, what is the “sustainable and desirable” world that lies ahead? Together with Egyptian composer Wael Sami Elkholy and singer-performers Brandy Butler, Françoise Gautier, and Steffi Lobréau, Ntando Cele uses the example of the “fast fashion” industry to craft a musical indictment of environmental neocolonialism, reawakening our imagination. 
*Wasted Land* is a poetic, multimedia, choral, and musical performance, steeped in irony and absurd humor, set in a near-future dystopia: our world, at an unspecified time, is ravaged by climate change and various forms of oppression, including racism. We recognize the schizophrenia of this future society, torn between Western environmentalism and the mountains of clothing—now toxic waste—piled up in the marginalized regions of the world. 
Ntando Cele questions the troubling absence of indigenous communities and the countries of Africa, Latin America, and India from discussions on solutions to climate change—as if a part of the world still had no place in this future society, which is at once imagined and responsible, and so attentive to the “living.”
A requiem dedicated to the old dream of a responsible and sustainable world—one that is Eurocentric, white, and self-referential.