Listening to Noise: Breadline — Food Rescue as System of Interruption

The positive representation of food rescue in dominant discourses obscures the question of why and how food becomes loss and waste in our industrial food system. Built-in obsolescence is an integral part of commercial production and not the residual effect of unoptimized processes. Through a reading of Michel Serres’s The Parasite, I explore his logic of a system that is based on difference, noise, and disorder. In this cacophonous paradigm, excesses are not treated as externalities, only intercepting relations of different orders. Listening to noise is tuning into information in alternative registers, opening up possibilities that enable new ecologies of practice. Presenting Breadline, a Web application developed by the author for food rescue in Hong Kong, the article demonstrates how the platform tackles obsolescence through generative interruptions. By tapping into externalities of the practice, Breadline successfully overcomes the logistical challenges of food rescue, offering an applied case study for the discussion.