Selected Works
Scoops, Swoops, and Hoops
House is Table
Congress for Bees
The Lifespan Project
Long-Span Plant-Stand
Soon: Earth Song
Soon: Marine Trade School
Soon: Alchemy Architects
Soon: Hive & Hollow
Soon: Photography
About
Information
Selected Works
Scoops, Swoops, and Hoops
House is Table
Congress for Bees
The Lifespan Project
Long-Span Plant-Stand
Soon: Earth Song
Soon: Marine Trade School
Soon: Alchemy Architects
Soon: Hive & Hollow
Soon: Photography
About
Information
The Lifespan Project
Research Work
University of Michigan Humanities Collaboratory
Professors: Mireille Roddier, Bénédicte Boisseron, Megan Sweeney
Research Assistants: CC Barick, Yumna Dagher, Elisabeth Fertig, Nicole Tooley, + me
Research Work
University of Michigan Humanities Collaboratory
Professors: Mireille Roddier, Bénédicte Boisseron, Megan Sweeney
Research Assistants: CC Barick, Yumna Dagher, Elisabeth Fertig, Nicole Tooley, + me
Role: image and video curation, video editing
The project was exhibited at The 2024 University of Michigan Climate Futures Symposium.
The Lifespan Project interrogates the concept of lifespan in things material and immaterial, as it looks at the used, the rotten, the obsolete, death, and grief. A team composed of students in Architecture, English, and Comparative Literature, and three faculty members from Architecture, AfroAmerican and African Studies, English, and Women’s and Gender Studies worked on this video installation, weaving together three distinct stories, at once personal and collective, from France, Ghana, and the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Mireille Roddier’s narrative takes us to Burgundy, France, as she reflects on a bygone era of local energy autonomy and sustainably regenerative subsistence that neither necessitated the importation of externally produced goods nor the consequential exportation of waste. She uses the commodification of water as an opportunity to reflect on the larger question of sewage and general waste accumulation in the modern world. Bénédicte Boisseron ties her brother’s untimely passing to an environmental scandal in the French Caribbean Islands. Through reflections on the colonial role of pesticide in banana plantations, Boisseron addresses her personal grief while interrogating the lifespan of human life, colonial history, and a banana. Meg Sweeney traveled to Accra, Ghana to study the devastating environmental and labor consequences of “dead white man’s clothes”: vast quantities of secondhand clothing—at least 40% of which is deemed textile waste—sent to Ghana every week from the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Through the theme of water, The Lifespan Project’s triptych film offers a powerful reflection on the human and environmental dimensions of consumption, waste, circularity, and reuse.
Mireille Roddier’s narrative takes us to Burgundy, France, as she reflects on a bygone era of local energy autonomy and sustainably regenerative subsistence that neither necessitated the importation of externally produced goods nor the consequential exportation of waste. She uses the commodification of water as an opportunity to reflect on the larger question of sewage and general waste accumulation in the modern world. Bénédicte Boisseron ties her brother’s untimely passing to an environmental scandal in the French Caribbean Islands. Through reflections on the colonial role of pesticide in banana plantations, Boisseron addresses her personal grief while interrogating the lifespan of human life, colonial history, and a banana. Meg Sweeney traveled to Accra, Ghana to study the devastating environmental and labor consequences of “dead white man’s clothes”: vast quantities of secondhand clothing—at least 40% of which is deemed textile waste—sent to Ghana every week from the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Through the theme of water, The Lifespan Project’s triptych film offers a powerful reflection on the human and environmental dimensions of consumption, waste, circularity, and reuse.