Remember The Net (1995)? That strange blockbuster about this terrifying new thing called The Internet that starred Sandra Bullock, post-Speed. In the new issue of Drain: A Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture on the theme of AIDS and Memory, I consider The Net’s cultural legacies as a popular film that modelled online data environments and risk through the example of HIV/AIDS. The article is called “Can a Computer Remember AIDS?” (spoiler: it can’t, well, not really) and in addition to providing a close reading of the Bullock film, I outline early archival research completed for my new project on “Crisis Infrastructures,” which offers a media history of the early web through AIDS activism. You can read the whole article here.
Guest editor Ricky Varghese invited me to contribute to this special issue and the whole project is something to behold, featuring contributions from many of my favourite writers and artists: Alexandra Juhasz, Ryan Conrad, Francisco-Fernando Granados, Theodore (Ted) Kerr, Theodore (Ted) Kerr, and Michèle Pearson Clarke amongst others.