What Happens After
Public Installation + Performance Platform | 2018 | BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn, NY
What Happens After is a large-scale public artwork and performance platform that deconstructs and reimagines a 19,000-pound U.S. military cargo truck. Originally deployed in the Gulf and Afghan wars and manufactured by Oshkosh Defense, the LMTV (Light Medium Tactical Vehicle) was dismantled and transformed into a sculptural stage for collective reflection on systemic violence, militarism, and the climate-extractive economy.
Commissioned by BRIC and curated by Jenny Gerow, the work challenges viewers to reconsider the fraught material life of war—from the sourcing of strategic minerals to the cultural and bodily trauma left behind. The project included a room-sized chalkboard drawing tracing the global military supply chain for cobalt, a mineral used in weapons, drones, and communications technology. This map revealed the entangled, often invisible routes of resource extraction—from Congo to China to U.S. defense contracts—rendering visible the worldwide circulations that support war economies.
The project was redesigned by artists, dancers, and veterans, and the resulting stage hosted performance artists including Benji Hart, NIC Kay, Fred Fleisher, David Thomson, and Shelley Senter. What Happens After invited direct engagement with an object that had formerly been an instrument of violence. The sculpture became a platform to stage new relationships: sensorial, collaborative, absurd, and healing.
Project Details
- Year: 2018
- Location: BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn, NY
- Curator: Jenny Gerow
- Commissioned by: BRIC
- Dimensions: Approx. 60 x 20 x 14 ft (vehicle + performance platform + wall diagram)
- Materials: Decommissioned Light Medium Tactical Vehicle (LMTV), steel, wood, chalkboard, cobalt supply chain diagram
- Themes: Military-industrial supply chains, systemic violence, transformation, performance, global extractive economies
“This piece began with grief, personal grief, and with trying to understand how intimate forms of violence are embedded within broader systems. I started asking where the objects in my life came from, and the research led to the global circuits of mineral extraction, militarization, and climate devastation. What Happens After came from a need to confront an object with a loaded history and ask: can it become something else? Can it host care, absurdity, healing, or resistance? And if one object can be transformed in public space, might we imagine systemic transformation, too?” - Mattingly
Installation Description
The central element of What Happens After was a full-scale military truck deconstructed and redesigned into a civic stage. This recontextualization turned a once-threatening object into a collaborative platform—physically, symbolically, and politically.
A major component was a chalkboard wall detailing the global mineral supply chains behind the U.S. military. Mattingly focused particularly on cobalt, of which the U.S. military consumes 62% of the global supply. Mined largely in the Congo by corporations such as Glencore and China Molybdenum, cobalt moves through refineries in China, Finland, and Canada, eventually becoming part of weapons systems—sometimes returning to the very places from which it was extracted, such as through AFRICOM operations. This circuit—material, economic, and geopolitical—was made visually comprehensible as a large diagram anchoring the gallery.
The vehicle itself, once stored in a U.S. Army boneyard at Fort Dix, NJ, became a living, shifting sculpture through performances that echoed, confronted, and reshaped its narrative.
Performance + Programming Highlights
- David Thomson & Shelley Senter — embodied practices of remembrance and physical confrontation
- Benji Hart & NIC Kay — performative meditations on systemic harm and Black futurity
- Veteran-led dialogues — engaging post-traumatic memory and narrative reframing
- Supply Chain Mapping Wall — participatory drawing and education on the extractive economy
- Public artist talks and workshops — reframing the object and inviting community response
Contextual Framework
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Strategic Minerals + Global War Economies
The LMTV was constructed from metals and components sourced through complex global supply chains, exemplifying how modern military objects are produced through decentralized and exploitative processes. Cobalt, a key material, moves across continents and is essential in defense and surveillance technology. -
Healing and Reimagination Through Performance
The project asked artists and audiences alike to confront difficult legacies—not to erase or romanticize them, but to inhabit them with new intention. By transforming a vehicle of war into a community platform, the work suggested a method for acknowledging harm while building pathways toward change.
Curatorial Response
“Mattingly transforms a military artifact into a civic invitation—asking performers and publics to rethink what public life and responsibility can look like in the shadow of militarization.” - Jenny Gerow
Documentation
Systemic Context
- The U.S. military is the world’s largest consumer of high-grade cobalt, a strategic mineral extracted largely from the Congo and refined in China, Finland, and Canada.
- The LMTV truck was made by Oshkosh Defense, assembled in the U.S. from globally sourced components, then deployed and later decommissioned at Fort Dix, NJ.
- These logistics reflect larger military-extractive entanglements at the heart of global commerce and climate degradation.