Waste as Art: Excavating Future Futures Through Multiple Perspectives

Billy Dufala’s Future Futures, one of the five monuments featured in the temporary exhibition Slow Motion, is both a public sculpture and a material commodity. The monument is made of thirty-six bales of aluminum scraps, each of which were diverted from landfills by human hands for future use. The bales are arranged into one large rectangular block, staged for viewers to draw connections between the artwork and everyday life, to reflect on extractive economies and practices, and to contemplate the life cycles of aluminum. But how else might we make sense of Future Futures in multiple, vastly different contexts—from the art museum to the landfill? This program is a conversation featuring an artist, an anthropologist, and a historian to highlight the multiple possibilities and perspectives for decoding Future Futures—Billy Dufala (artist and creative director of Recycled Artists in Residency), Robin Nagle (professor at New York University), and Paul Farber (founding director of Monument Lab). By bringing a diverse roster of thought partners together, this period offers a myriad of insights, new directions, and collaborations are bound to emerge.The conversation will be moderated by Slow Motion’s curator, Patricia Eunji Kim.

Cost of Talk Only: Free with admission, Free for members