Dump Site is gathered by Ven Qiu, with Dorothy Tang as archivist, and Robin O on site design.

Dump Site is an archive of files pulled from the trash folder. 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. “In the search for a narrative, we inevitably create waste.”¹ 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. Dump Site transforms deleted files into tangible substrate for cultural memory. When reconvening with trash files, we realize the materiality of deletion. Byte by byte, the ephemeral becomes tangible.

This digital trash heap metabolizes deleted files into archaeological artifacts. Dump Site has three goals: make mess and sow fiction in archival practice, bridge dichotomies within materiality, privacy, usefulness, and time, and provide a field of cyber residues for gleaning cultural memory.

There are 3 ways to engage with Dump Site: uploading trash, tagging trash, and recycling trash. Through uploading, we welcome all file types (text, image, document, sound, video, web). Through tagging, we welcome all who wade through Dump Site to tag items with their own associations, definitions, and fictions. Using tags, we spin poetics out of waste. Digital trash becomes a collective fiction. Finally, as part of its recycling program, Dump Site welcomes media artists to use the collection as a source of found materials: download whatever you want!

¹ MORRISON, SUSAN SIGNE. The Literature of Waste: Material Ecopoetics and Ethical Matter. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.