The Afterlife of Abandoned Objects is an animated film based on Julia Oldham’s exploration of both urban wilderness and residential areas affected by climate change during her artist residency with the New York City Urban Field Station. This project was developed for The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the Eugene Symphony Orchestra. While the video was designed for a particular piece of music performed by the symphony, due to music copyright, there are two versions of the piece. The above version includes an original soundtrack by Oldham. More information about the symphony collaboration follows:

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Eugene Symphony Association celebrate an innovative collaboration with four Oregon visual artists in response to Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)’s orchestral masterpiece Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber. Over the past year, while working closely with Eugene Symphony Music Director and Conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong, Mika Aono, Anna Fidler, Andrew Myers, and Julia Oldham created new works in printmaking, painting, drawing, and animation. Each commissioned artist was inspired by the virtuosity, imagination, experimentation, and humor inherent in Hindemith’s most popular work. More info here.

In Oldham’s video, created to accompany “March,” the final movement of Metamorphosis, she animates urban wilderness landscapes that she explored during her 2019 residency with the New York City Urban Field Station.

Images: two animation stills from The Afterlife of Abandoned Things, 2020, and two images of Oldham’s work projected during the Eugene Symphony’s performance in February, 2022, courtesy of the Eugene Symphony.