The Mutoid Waste Company

The Mutoid Waste Company was a British art collective and sound system founded in London in the early 1980s, associated with the free festival and squatter movements and best known for large-scale mobile sculptures made from salvaged industrial waste. They became known for elaborate mechanical sculptures — robots, vehicles, and structures assembled from car engines, steel girders, and other debris — appearing at free parties and protests, combining rave music with pyrotechnics and theatrical staging. After police pressure forced them out of Britain in the late 1980s, they relocated to Berlin and later founded Mutonia, a settlement built from salvaged machinery in Santarcangelo, Italy.