The World After Us: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures
by nathaniel s
The World After Us
traveling solo exhibition, January 2020
The World After Us: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures is a traveling solo exhibition of sculptures, installations, prints, and photographs, that combines plant life with electronic waste and scientific experimentation with artistic exploration. Its installation takes the forms of: a wall-hung jungle of computer detritus and biological reclamation; fossilized and reconfigured phones and laptops; and reimagined and re-formed electronics. Viewers encounter a unique visual curiosity in and around positive human intervention into our environmental futures.
What will digital media be and do, after us?
What will my laptop, phone, or tablet look like in a million years?
How will our devices weather or grow over time?
What else might our techno-waste be, and how might we sense and feel this?
Where might electronics lead our environmental and economic politics?
Can we plan and act toward new and different futures?
Taking cues from journalist Alan Weisman’s provocative book The World Without Us, this exhibition is a timely and relevant series of aesthetic and ethical provocations around where and how we might change our ecological trajectories. The World After Us asks us to rethink and potentially transform conversations, thoughts, and actions around media production, use, and waste. At stake, whether in our everyday interactions or on a much larger scale, are the relationships between humans and the natural world on the one hand, politics and commerce on the other.
