Dr. Jamie Allen
Researcher and artist occupied with infrastructures that produce, sustain, forestall and terminate life.
Dr. Jamie Allen (PhD) is a researcher and artist, occupied with the infrastructures which sustain life. His work has been exhibited internationally, from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin to the American Museum of Natural History in New York to the Nam June Paik Art Center in Korea. He teaches, lectures, and leads workshops widely, engaging with and working to create collaborative contexts that acknowledge how care, attachment, and love are central to knowledge practices like art and research. He likes to make things with his head and hands – investigations into infrastructural and material media, energy, and information systems as public-making projects.
Of Death and Disuse: Laying to Waste and to Rest
Of Death and Disuse: Laying to Waste and to Rest is a reading and processional event that examines industrial lifecycles and electronic waste through the lens of mortality and renewal. In an era where the relentless pace of technological advancement has left a trail of environmental degradation and social inequity, we seek to create a space for reflection, mourning, and transformation—even transubstantiation. Through a combination of sermon-like reflections, multimedia, and elements of traditional, symbolic funeral rituals, this event will guide participants through a collective experience of "laying to rest" obsolete technologies and harmful practices. This dirge for the old is also a celebration of potential new beginnings. By laying to rest the remnants of an ambiguous era, we make room to consider our role in shaping a future that is neither utopic nor dystopic but hopeful, immanent and possible.
