Title: Katherine Behar: E-Waste (Exhibition)
Year: 2014.
Exhibited:
Exhibition Catalogue:
Press:
Credits:
"E-Waste" is co-produced by the College of Arts & Sciences and the College of Fine Arts in collaboration with CELT (Center for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching) at the University of Kentucky, and is supported in part by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.
Exhibition sound design: Shelley Burgon
Photos: Dana Rogers (University of Kentucky), John H. Morrow (Eyedrum), Chris Wong (Eyedrum)
"Katherine Behar: E-Waste" is an exhibition of sculptures and videos. Combining machine-made, handmade, and organic forms, including a "fossilized" 3D printer, the installation offers a meditation on consumer technology's environmental impact, digital labor's perverse acceleration, and big data's corporeality. The exhibition premiered at the Tuska Center for Contemporary Art at the University of Kentucky, curated by Dima Strakovsky, in November 2014 and traveled to Boston Cyberarts Gallery, curated by George Fifield, in November, 2015.
The exhibition includes USB sculptures in my series, E-Waste, a six-channel video installation in my series Modeling Big Data, and a 3D printer installation, 3D-&&. This work is inspired by a science fiction scenario in which commonplace USB devices continue working, long after the humans they were designed to serve have gone extinct. The gadgets are transformed into mutant fossils, encased in stone with lights blinking, speakers chirping, and fans spinning eternally.