Back Then

mixed media work about memory, obsolete technology, and the futures we once imagined from a couch.

A pulp sci-fi couple stands at the center, lifted from the cover of a tomorrow that never arrived. Around them, the early language of digital play crowds in: Pac-Man, ghosts, dot trails, arrow keys, a floppy disk simply labeled "Games."

The title points backward, but the work resists easy nostalgia. These dead formats are treated as emotional storage, the places where a generation kept its sense of wonder before the future actually showed up and felt different than promised.

The ray gun fires upward and its blast becomes the word "ZAP!", as if violence, play, and longing all speak the same cartoon alphabet. A peace sign anchors the corner, an artifact from the same lost moment.

Why this work matters: it captures the strange grief of outdated technology, how a floppy disk or an arcade ghost can hold a feeling we no longer have a machine to play back.