KoLab Days: Digital Waste

In the organizer's words:

Kolab Days #1 - Digital Waste

The first KoLab Days 2026 on April 16 and 19 will focus on the topic of "digital waste". In cooperation with the exhibition "Müll. An exhibition about the global paths of waste" at Museum Ostwall, we want to explore digital waste with you.

While physical mountains of waste are piling up in plain sight around the world and plastic islands are floating through the world's oceans, digital mountains of waste are growing in secret. Corrupt files, caches that have not been emptied, planned obsolescence, endless streams of AI slop and the massive ecological footprints associated with them: the remains remain invisible, hiding the exploitation of the environment and the people whose work is made invisible.

We want to uncover these layers and ask: What happens if we don't empty the digital wastebasket, but instead see it as a repository of materials?

What actually is digital waste? Can we use it productively? Can we re- or upcycle it? What do sampling, found footage, circuit bending and datamoshing have to do with it? What happens when one person's trash becomes another's treasure?

To mark this occasion, we want to create a digital junkyard that we will show in VR from Saturday, April 17.04.26 as part of our "Digital Waste" exhibition.

Summary of offers:

Workshop 1: Tronsformation with Akwasi Afrane
16.04.26 - 12:00-18:00 & 17.04.26 - 12:00 - 15:00

Workshop 2: Scan the Trash
17.04.26 - 15:30-18:30

Workshop 3: Lost Places of the Internet

18.04.26 - 12:00-15:00

Workshop 4: Corrupting Data Workshop - All Glitches Are Beautiful

18.04.26 - 15:30-18:30

Exhibition: Digital Waste

18.04.26 - 18:30-24:00 & 19.04.26 - 12:00 - 18:00

PowerStrangersStrolling - a post-digital performance about found objects and those who want to become one.

18.04.26 - 19:30 - 20:30 & throughout the evening

Artist Talk with Sticky Fragments & exhibiting artists
18.04.26 - 20:00 - 21:00

Registration for the workshops, click here or on kolab.nrw.

More info below:

Workshop 1: Tronsformation with Akwasi Afrane

This workshop encourages critical engagement with the multi-layered concept of waste, with a particular focus on raising awareness and promoting innovative reuse and upcycling practices. Participants will work hands-on by dismantling and reassembling obsolete electronic devices - treating these discarded objects as a malleable creative mass. This process creates models that can then be transformed into complex digital 3D assets, contributing to the development of content for augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), games and animation. The workshop not only teaches practical skills, but also promotes a deeper understanding of how to deal with e-waste and demonstrates the great potential of sustainable design methods in our world today.

Akwasi Bediako Afrane lives and works in Kumasi, Ghana. He uses electronic waste to create interactive installations inspired by pop culture, science fiction films and Afrofuturism. For the exhibition "Garbage. An exhibition about the global paths of waste", a new work entitled TC-2000 was developed. The work is based on the manga Battle Angel: Alita. Afrane uses the template to talk about issues of dependency between the Global North and Global South in terms of waste production and shipping.

This workshop will be held in English.

Date: 16.04.26 - 12:00-18:00 & 17.04.26 - 12:00 - 15:00

Location: Digital Coproduction Lab, 44137 Park der Partnerstädte 2

Registration: kolab.nrw

Number of participants: max. 15

Workshop Host: Akwasi Afrane (English) & Laurin Bürmann

Workshop 2: Scan the Trash

As part of the KoLab Days on Digital Waste, this workshop explores how urban waste can be transformed into new, meaningful objects using digital tools. In the surroundings of the Dortmunder U, participants will scan discarded materials with their smartphones and import them into Blender. There, the scans are creatively developed and transformed into functional everyday objects - such as flower pots, salt shakers, jewelry holders or abstract sculptures. The workshop concludes with the 3D printing of the resulting designs, so that each team of participants takes away a physical upcycling object as a tangible workshop result.

Date: 17.04.26 - 15:30-18:30

Location: Digital co-production lab, 44137 Park der Partnerstädte 2

Registration: kolab.nrw

Number of participants: max. 15

Workshop Host: Marc Kemper & Timo Sodenkamp

Workshop 3: Lost Places of the Internet

In this workshop we will focus on the Lost Places of the Internet and develop an audio-visual installation as part of our Digital Junkyard.

Every second, hours of video material are uploaded to platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and co. But while algorithms constantly feed us with what is "relevant", "viral" or "popular", the majority of this data sinks into digital insignificance. These are the forgotten places of the internet: untitled test uploads, lonely livestreams, shaky footage from surveillance cameras and private moments that don't get a single view.

In this workshop, we will become digital scrap collectors and online archaeologists. Together we will create an audio-visual wasteland and integrate it into our Digital Junkyard VR environment. Using various tools such as OBS, Max/Jitter and coding, we will scrape the web for lost recordings, squeeze them through the digital shredder and create a remix of soundscapes and video collages from them. You will learn techniques that you can use to continue recycling at home.

No previous knowledge is necessary. Participation is also possible independently of the other workshops.

If possible, please bring along: Headphones, laptop and pre-installed OBS Studio and the required plugins. You can find them on our Github under the link:

https://github.com/Koproduktionslabor/lost-places-workshop

If you have, you can also bring Max/MSP.

Date: 18.04.26 - 12:00-15:00

Location: Digital Coproduction Lab, 44137 Park der Partnerstädte 2

Registration: kolab.nrw

Number of participants: max. 15

Workshop Host: Fabian Bentrup & Michael Nguyen

Workshop 4: Corrupting Data Workshop - All Glitches Are Beautiful

Behind the programs we use lies the information that makes up all the files we see as users. Images, videos and sounds are built on an invisible layer of text and data that constructs what we experience when we listen to music or take a selfie. Glitches in this context are errors, unexpected "disturbances" within the data. Glitches are things that do not fit into the hegemony of the software.

At the same time, glitches bring unpredictability, surprise and something new. As artist Rosa Menkman calls for in her Glitch Manifesto: "Contest the operative templates of creative practice by fighting genres and expectations!" By moving outside of predetermined forms and formats, we open up new possibilities for our artistic practice. The question then is: What is our role as users and artists?

In this workshop we will explore different techniques for glitching images. How does an image sound? We will edit images with sound editors. Can we hide a poem in an image? Let's unravel the data of an image. We will also explore together some programming tools for interactive glitches with p5.glitch and p5.js.

Date: 18.04.26 - 15:30-18:30

Location: Digital Coproduction Lab, 44137 Park der Partnerstädte 2

Registration: kolab.nrw

Number of participants: max. 15

Workshop Host: Florencia Alonso, Alia Brunschier

Exhibition: Digital Waste

As part of the KoLab Days 2026 we present the exhibition "Digital Waste" on 18.04.2026 in the co-production laboratory. The starting point is the question of what digital waste actually is and how we can work with it artistically.

On the one hand, the exhibition will show the Digital Junkyard created during the KoLab Days, which is a walk-in VR environment that brings together digital remnants, data fragments and experimental works by the participants. On the other hand, projects by external artists will be presented that deal with digital waste, data remnants and the ecological and cultural traces of digital infrastructures from different perspectives.

Date: 18.04.26 - 18:30-24:00 & 19.04.26 - 12:00 - 18:00

Location: Digital Coproduction Lab, 44137 Park der Partnerstädte 2

PowerStrangersStrolling - a post-digital performance about found objects and those who want to become one.

In their work "PowerStrangers - Touching the not yet", the Sticky Fragments have tapped into liminal spaces in the Ruhr region - such as former industrial sites, wasteland and urban in-between zones - as central starting points for artistic research. These places of transition are understood as resonance spaces for transformation, collective memory and questions of belonging. Based on found objects and the specific materialities of these places, they develop physical and performative practices that record traces of use, decay and reinterpretation. Found objects, surfaces and structures are transformed into wearable sculptures and stage arrangements and form the basis for multi-sensory performances.

For the Kolab Days in Dortmund, the Sticky Fragments are now developing PowerStrangersStrolling - a post-digital performance about found objects and those who want to become found objects. In this way, the Sticky Fragments play with the found objects while walking. They spin new contexts from digital and IRL (in real life) fragments, utilize and recycle what has already been performed, reanimate inanimate material and fabulate about what has been discarded. The found objects are thus placed in relation to each other, tell stories and open up new contexts. Through installative and performative elements, a space is created in which the material is directly accessed. The participants come into contact with the objects, rearrange them and see themselves as part of this process - as bodies that can also be read and located as found objects - as PowerStrangersStrollin.

Date: 18.04.26 - 19:30 - 20:30 & throughout the evening

Location: Digital Coproduction Lab, 44137 Park der Partnerstädte 2

Artist Talk with Sticky Fragments & exhibiting artists

As part of the exhibition "Digital Waste", an artist talk will take place in which participating artists will talk about their work and their perspectives on digital waste. Together we will discuss how data remnants, technical errors or digital overproduction can be used artistically and what ecological, political and aesthetic questions arise in the process.

The Sticky Fragments group, who will be showing a performance/installation beforehand, will also be part of the discussion. Their works operate at the intersection of physical theatre, visual arts and digitality and are the result of collective research, improvisation and devising. It is precisely through their handling of fragments, processes and materialities of the digital that they offer an exciting perspective on the topic of digital waste: fragments, remnants and breaks are not understood here as errors, but as productive starting points for new artistic forms and possible futures.

Date: 18.04.26 - 20:00 - 21:00

Location: Digital Coproduction Lab, 44137 Park der Partnerstädte 2