Waste Wall
ITP's Alum, Nathaniel Stern, presents his exhibition, The World After Us: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures (TWAU), travels to the Binghamton University Art Museum, Jan 27 - Mar 10.
The World After Us: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures is a traveling solo exhibition of sculptures, installations, prints, and photographs that combine plant life with electronic waste, and scientific experimentation with artistic exploration. They take 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.
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.
The World After Us makes available a 200-page hardcover catalog, a short documentary (also below), and an audio tour. It premiered at the Museum of Wisconsin Art | Downtown (MoWA | DTN) in the Saint Kate Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, WI, January – March 2020 and traveled to the Binghamton University Art Museum January -March 2022. It has been featured in WIRED, CNET, Fast Company, New City Art, the Shepherd Express, on Spectrum News, as a Creative Mornings talk, and elsewhere. It has been generously supported by the UWM Office of Research.