Alien Museum of Earth, 2011

A culture of dumping unwanted objects down the many ravines of Pittsburgh is a difficult habit to change. Mount Washington Community Development Corporation along with Allegheny Cleanways sponsors an annual festival that combines hauling debris out of a nearby ravine with artists’ creating on-site sculptures and installations from the loot!

People of all ages were encouraged to select an object from the dumpsite, imagine themselves as aliens who have arrived on a post-human earth, and try to ‘figure out’ from the object what humans might have used it for. Participants wrote or drew descriptions of the objects use, gave them names, and placed them in the “museum”.