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Abstract
Humans have always striven to overcome their finitude by leaving traces. The phenomenology and hermeneutics of the twentieth century interpreted traces as meaningful sources for reconstructing the past and disregarded their materiality. This culturalist and retrospective approach nowadays has become untenable, as it is impossible to generate significative traces without producing waste as well. Waste itself forms a special category of trace that is unintentional and partly nocuous. Moreover, a final repository appears to have perversely fulfilled the dream of leaving ineffaceable traces that would survive humanity itself. In this new context, a future-oriented approach, one that would engage collectivities in controlling the production and erasure of traces and revaluate productivity and ephemerality, is necessary. In line with this, contemporary artists refrain from leaving durable traces, recycle materials, remove environmental waste and restore landscapes, visualize invisible pollutants, and anticipate future traces of destruction. By that, they redirect attention from traces to tracing and from human creativity to ecopoiesis.