The Dead, The Living, and The Injured: Care in the Aftermath of Technology
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Visual Arts
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Imaging and Digital Arts
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This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
Abstract
The Dead, The Living, and The Injured: Care in the Aftermath of Technology is a body of work that anthropomorphizes electronics to explore their environmental and technological afterlives, once deemed obsolete by their original owners. Through sculptural installations, improvised performance, video, and analog feedback systems, I categorize discarded technologies as Living, Injured, or Dead. Many of these electronics are found, rescued, and reactivated—each carrying a material, cultural, and ecological history that challenges the disposability built into modern design. I work with broken machines, a TV repair professional, and musical improvisers to reimagine the lifespan of technology as something extendable through care, repair, and reuse. This work asks: What does it mean to care for objects that cannot care back? What do obsolete devices reveal about the systems that produce and discard them? In doing so, I resist the logic of planned obsolescence and foreground an ethos of stewardship, intimacy, and refusal.