About Dump Site:
Dump Site is stewarded by Ven Qiu and Dorothy Tang, with Robin O on site design.
Dump Site is a submission-based repository of deleted media. This virtual landfill is a multimedia mass of files that were recently deleted and almost erased. What we throw away is a candid echo of what we keep close: projects, secrets, gripes, inspirations, loved ones. Dump Site is a public diary, a screenshot confessional. Conjuring memory through the lens of discard, these second-hand files evoke a sentimental gaze toward desktop debris.
Gathering in our hard drive, our files trace the contours of our relationships, work, and identity. To contend with storage capacity, we take on the duty of deletion (some more than others). We trash files that feel irrelevant, reserving memory for potentially relevant files in the future. In this way, deleting is both a pragmatic act and a curatorial one. Archivists in our own right, we prune our hard drive to assemble a personal history. The trash folder provides a fantasy of complete erasure: files vaporized with a simple click and drag.
When we pull files out of the trash folder and re-signify them as artifacts of history, we reinstate their thingness. Dump Site enlists visitors to put their own trash files in context with others, building a collective silhouette of a greater digital narrative. Pooling digital trash enables us to reminisce across desktops. Through the creation of a trash archive, we enrich digital files with metadata surrounding the conditions of deletion and transform deleted files into a tangible substrate for cultural memory.
Deletion occurs across a spectrum of privacy: within our personal devices, online communities, and cultural institutions. Dump Site preserves media within this spectrum, and researches how policy changes and mass deletion events interface with these degrees of privacy. As we steward this archive, we ask: How does digital trash reflect cultural memory and fill the gaps? How does archiving trash and embracing mess expand archival practice? What are the mechanics that drive deletion and how do they affect collective access to public information? This digital trash heap metabolizes deleted files into archaeological artifacts. Dump Site has three goals: to research the conditions of deletion; make mess out of archival practice; and preserve artifacts of digital cultural memory that are removed against our will.
About Us:
Ven Qiu is a memory worker and creative technologist based in the Bay Area, co-parented by Chinese immigrants and the internet. They draw from their work as a tattooer, archivist, and researcher to explore the textures of memory and archival practice. Their work most often involves oral history, field recording, body-art, scent, and born-digital media. Qiu also moonlights as a meme admin.
Dorothy Tang is an archivist interested in translating memories and emotions through a variety of mediums, such as oral history, digital expression, and scent. Their work is informed by community archival practices, which center collective ownership, reflection and sense making. Their research interests include: information and power, sensory-based archival activation, reparative archives, and nontraditional repositories.
Robin O is an anti-disciplinary artist who works with text, sound, and image. They also work as a designer and coder, interested in poetic computation and elevating clean functional design systems. Their current research interests include poetics of memory and relation, quantum and dynamical systems, and the spirituality and mysticism of the cosmos. With Dump Site, they use their design and coding practice to create engaging and alternative interactions to data and web archives.