Once This Is Over

Centuries- and millennia-old rubbish fills today’s museums and tells stories of civilisations that created it. We study this rubbish carefully, as if it were a text that allows us to understand the values and controversies of past societies. But we treat “the redundant” of our own time differently. We don’t display it in showcases, and we don’t see it as a document of the time; rather, we remove it from our field of vision.

The origin of Once This Is Over is the question of what has to remain hidden for the “normal” to even exist. Rubbish is the starting point to think about the redundant, about what has to disappear so that things can remain as they are. The question of what is rubbish is never merely a question of an object. It is also a question of the society that recognised it as redundant. What would happen if we looked at the redundant of our time as if it were archaeological findings? If we placed it in museums and read it like texts? What will our redundant narrate from the display cases once this is over?