House of European History: digital waste chapter
- Chronicles of technological progress
Overview
“Throwaway” is a project initiated by the House of European History that explores Europe’s waste management history, for which I introduced chapter about digital waste.
Main objectives
❋ Crafting a narrative centered on the concept of digital waste
❋ Illustrating the technological evolution in Europe through its “digital remnants”
❋ Conducting thorough location scouting for project implementation
Project carried out in partnership with the National Ethnographic Museum in Poland.
Final outcome
A video material presenting the history of the continent from the perspective of discarded computers, obsolete smartphones, and forgotten hard drives and video exhibition at the House of European History in Brussels.
Main reflection
The project showed that even in a world of zeros and ones, what we throw away says more about us than what we keep, and that the history of technology is not just a story of progress, but also about what we leave behind. In the digital era, our trash becomes a kind of social chronicle, showing how quickly our priorities and technologies change.