the introduction of social media into contemporary internet usage has shifted our understanding of how we ‘should’ present ourselves online:
curate moments to only the very best, but remain grounded and humble;
create relatable content, but don’t be too honest;
belong to spaces, but stand out.
the creators of the GeoCities websites featured in this publication are average internet users, experimenting with creating community spaces based on shared interests (page 23 shows an attempt to create ‘The Vampire Blood Cult’) or simply sharing with the world who they are as a person - a linguist, a PhD student, a grandfather, a vintage car salesman, a world traveller, a video game enthusiast, a dog lover, a cat lover, a baker, a goth, an ‘all-around good guy’. i find the grounding of simple internet usage as a method of facilitating connection and presenting yourself authentically as a welcomed contrast to the heavily-mediated internet culture of today, and wished to preserve some of the artefacts in physical form.
it is also important for me to make digital world accessible in tangible formats; although there are wonderful archives of internet material hosted online, such as WayBack Machine, the web is a volatile place, and with technofascism becoming ever more prominent as digitalised ideas of capitalism plague our online spaces, we cannot rely solely on virtual tools to preserve our own histories. the people featured in zine, archive, abandoned are unknown to me - although i wonder how they are now, how much their lives have changed, we likely will never know - and our perception of their identities will continue to exist in a singularised form, shaped by what they chose to share on their homemade website, a product of true devotion in a pre-AI landscape. by preserving an idea of their history in a physical format, this will hopefully stand even if the original page or archive ceases to exist - even if that is stored on a bookshelf, on a coffee table, or in elisabeth’s case, in this photo.
currently, only 5 copies of this publication exist:
1 is in my living room;
3 were sold to buyers and fellow artists across the UK and Germany;
and 1 was left in the communal book trade area of a hostel in Berlin, to be read by someone waiting to check in or returning from a night out.