SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Objects, plastic, 3D-printing. 2016 

I asked each of my school friends to bring a favorite, meaningful—yet functionally useless—old object from home. These were items that held deep sentimental value but served no practical purpose. I asked them to recount the history of these objects, and then, I made a radical choice: I scanned the items for 3D printing, and destroyed the originals.

By transferring these personal mementos from the realm of memory into the realm of art, I engaged in a form of "useless archiving." The resulting white, plastic copies were "born" by a machine without human touch. This process emphasizes a total stratification of form and matter; the destruction of the physical object forces a violent separation between the human owner and the material reality.

To extend this alienation to its fullest, the exhibition of these sterile copies is accompanied by a cold, automated reading of the intimate stories shared by my classmates. Deprived of the original warm voice and the physical touch, the unique histories become a monotonous, boring sound. The original objects are gone, but these perfect cast-ins of non-degradable plastic remain. They may be found by archaeologists many years later—hollow, plastic artifacts of the future.