WE WANT YOUR TRASH

Digital objects may appear minute relative to the physical objects we throw away every day, but they aren’t without palpable heft. Everything digital is stored on physical memory, and when that memory gets full, old, slow, or unstylish, we throw it away. Even digital objects in the cloud live in massive data centers scattered about the earth, and we use a large portion of it to store our trash.

We process hundreds, thousands of pieces of media from the web every week, deliberately downloading images or caching streamed audio, etc. Those objects pass from the web through our bodies and desktops before ending up trashed or recycled. As they accumulate, what stories do those objects tell? What residue do they leave?

So let’s make something of that trash. Let’s give it purpose, starting with the trash that sits on our own desktops.

First, the curators upload a file from the trash bin on their computer. Then, an artist creatively combines (in any medium they see fit) that file with trash from their own computer. Every week a different artist takes the file created the previous week and repeats the process. Think of it like an ongoing exquisite corpse of digital garbage. Welcome to the Trash Club.

FEATURED ARTISTS

Hannah Newman
Tia Factor
Zach Whitworth
Marcelo Fontana
Catherine Chen
Abram Stern (aphid)
Kara Stone
Keith McGraw
(and more to come soon)

Curated by Midgray as part of The Wrong Biennale.

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