Using Art to Confront Food Waste: Annie Scott’s Provocative Performance
Last week, students at Williams College passing through Paresky during lunch saw something unusual—rows of trays with piles of leftover food displayed on the porch. The provocative display was a performance art piece by Annie Scott, a senior at Williams, concerned about the growing issue of food waste on campus.
For the entire lunch period, Annie collected uneaten food and laid it out for all to see. Their goal? To encourage students to reflect on the daily waste they create, which is often overlooked.
“I wanted to remove that layer of detachment,” Annie explained when we sat down to talk. “Normally, food waste disappears into an opaque container, and we stop thinking about it. This performance was about making it real.”
Annie’s art embodied the reality of food waste many of us prefer to ignore. “We throw food away and detach ourselves from the waste we make,” they said. “You don’t have to think about where it goes, how much there is, or what happens next.” By presenting the waste in such a visible way, Annie was able to get students to confront the consequences of their daily habits.
To plan the performance, they reached out to Facilities and Dining Services, as well as the Food Waste Working Group, to figure out how to collect and display the waste safely. The Food Waste Working Group, which includes students, faculty, and staff from the ZCE, Custodial, the Office of Campus Life, and Dining Services, is working towards a proposal to reduce food waste and welcomed Annie’s role in bringing that concern into the public eye.
The balance between personal and institutional responsibility was a major question that Annie wrestled with during the project. “Is food waste really just a personal issue, or is there more the institution can do to prevent it?” they asked. While students may need to be more mindful, they believe that Williams can also play a larger role in reducing waste through structural changes, such as providing more information about portion sizes or improving composting options.
What makes performance art such a powerful medium for Annie is its ability to provoke a visceral, emotional response. “Art gives people something to project their own experiences onto,” they said. “You can imagine yourself in the performance, seeing your own waste. That connection makes it more personal and harder to ignore.” Annie sees their art as a way to engage people beyond just facts and figures. By creating a physical, relatable representation of waste, they tap into emotions that facts alone may not reach.
Annie hopes this performance is just the beginning. “I’m not separate from this issue either,” they acknowledged, noting that we all play a part in the problem and the solution. Their goal is to keep the conversation going, potentially expanding their work in collaboration with other campus groups. Performance art, they believe, will remain an important tool in their activism.
For Annie, the ultimate success of this project will be if it inspires even small shifts in how we think about food waste on campus, hopefully sustaining an ongoing conversation about waste on campus and encouraging both individual and collective actions toward reducing it.
Special thanks to Annie Scott ‘25
Written by ZCE communications intern Shahwar Akbar ‘27