GEOGRAPHIES OF STUFF
The secret lives of our everyday things.
Thursdays 10am-3pm | Ages 8 - 13 | April - June 2014
We live in a world of stuff. Our lives are filled with so much stuff -- stuff we eat, and wear, and use every day -- that we can forget sometimes to pause and ask some really simple questions. Questions like: where does our stuff come from? And what happens to our stuff when we throw it away?
Beginning with a few chosen objects -- a computer, a juice box, a lego -- we’ll step into the global web of stories, paths, and places that exist in the secret lives of our things. We’ll investigate the trails of our items, from production to distribution, consumption, and disposal. We’ll map the routes of our everyday items, and discover the parts of the world that have touched and made the things we use.
And then we’ll act as garbologists -- trash archaeologists -- examining the things we throw out, and studying ourselves: what does our trash say about who we are -- as a society, as a culture? What things do we need for survival? What things do we need for our happiness? What is our trash, and what are our treasures? We’ll follow our trash cans out of Kite’s Nest, and find out where our waste goes, what happens to our recycling, and how long our stuff lives.
Together we’ll re-imagine the past and future lives of our stuff, foraging for hidden treasures, and playing with the notions of reduce, reuse, and recycle. By looking at the stories and geographies of our things, we’ll explore big questions about our environment, econoy, technologies and culture, making crucial links between our world and ourselves.
