01/12/2025
With the text..
Last week, we hosted The Devil’s Milk, a symposium dedicated to critical reflections on rubber at Droog. Thank you to everyone who joined us, in the room, on screen, and in thought. And thank you to Stichting Stokroos and the Stimuleringsfonds for making it happen.
Rubber is everywhere and almost invisible. As a material, it’s at once spiritual, industrial, botanical, synthetic. It resists preservation, yet demands attention. That paradox shaped the evening.
🔹 Keynote by Shahar Livne – conceptual material designer – introduced her new research into rubber, examining its ecological, historical, and symbolic dimensions.
🔹 Lecture by John Loadman – chemist and author of Tears of the Tree – mapped the global story of rubber, from Mesoamerica to the rise of industrial empires.
🔹 Talk by Tiago Silva Alves Muniz – archaeologist and author of The Archaeology of the Amazonian Rubber Boom – revealed the hidden labour, violence, and networks of the Amazon rubber trade.
🔹 Curatorial column by Yev Kravt – on ephemeral materials – offered 10 reasons not to conserve rubber, asking whether museums should embrace decay instead of resisting it.
🔹 Talk by Eduardo di Deus – anthropologist – on the mythology and domestication of the rubber tree, and the cultural narratives that shaped it.
🔹 Talk by Anke Blume – chemist and expert in synthetic rubber – on current innovations in elastomers, and the challenges of making synthetic rubber more sustainable.
The room held contradictions, between extraction and preservation, science and storytelling, the archive and the body. Rubber gave us the frame. The night gave us the friction.
🎥 We recorded everything, give us a little time to edit, and we’ll share the link soon.
