The Dead, The Living, and The Injured: Care in the Aftermath of Technology

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.