Dead Link Club

An evening of internet archaeology, collective memory and speculation about digital afterlives.

Digital death and afterlife are topics that surround us everywhere: from platform shutdowns, websites disappearing and discontinued services, to Meta’s patents for death bots, zombie and dead internet theories, online memorials or grief rituals for obsolete tech. There is talk about the urgency of archiving, of keeping sources alive, of preserving the memories of marginalized voices and communities. At the same time, there are demands for the right to be forgotten, for opacity and the need to hide in the dark forests.

We are intrigued by the collectivizing energy of grieving and take seriously the pain and disorientation that can come with lost online connections, but we are not interested in nostalgia. Therefore, we will examine the concrete conditions that lead to these deaths: what economic, political and technological contexts make platforms and services come to die? What communities do they leave behind, what do they transform into and what disappears with them? Join the Dead Link Club for its first session on Tuesday, 30 June at 7 pm at panke.gallery to find out!

Bring a defunct website, a deleted subreddit or a service that stopped responding, and let's run a dead link autopsy together. We'll pick some links per session and investigate together.

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Dead Link Club is part of the research project and event series Damnatio Memoriae by Tommaso Cappelletti & Noemi Garay.