Dr Kim Foale very kindly invited me to do an interview for the Geeks for Social Change blog about digital archiving. It felt so validating to take a moment to reflect on one specific thread of my career, particularly one that connects to the museums side that goes all the way back to my undergrad year abroad experience. This interview was prompted by my two upcoming workshops with Raju Rage’s Desperate Livin project, on 22nd November online and 2nd December at Studio Voltaire in London.
Free, booking essential Saturday 22 November 2025, 4–6 pm UK time
I’ll soon be running an online workshop on digital archiving, building on the Desperate Livin project that collects grassroots resources for trans people and our supporters in a handmade indie website (see desperatelivin.com)
Participants will learn how to build and share their digital skills; centre Trans health, autonomy and community-led knowledge; improve accessibility across the Desperate Livin’ website; and keep the archive socially active and sustainable.
Here’s something that connects a lot of the moral injury and just awkward conversations that I have as a digital artist in the 2020s:
A concept, tool, or field of enquiry was once a broad possibility space, explored by folks with lots of different perspectives and interests. A big pond that you can swim around in around fairly freely, without feeling a strong pull in one direction or another. Some currents lead you closer to capital, some lead you further away.
I’m trying to guard these vulnerable feelings with care, but I want to say something in the open about how utterly lonely it is trying to find the audience for Intrapology.
Rationally, I know that this is not personal, nor a reflection of the quality of my work. For one thing, Intrapology is made by a team of very talented people, and even on a bad day I can see clearly that my own deficiencies as an artist are more than adequately counterbalanced by their contributions.
This week the British Standards Institute published a report into young people’s attitudes to the internet. The headline is “Half of young people want to grow up in a world without internet”. The report comes in the context of a wave of new regulations and legislation governing the internet, including the Online Standards Act, which has been criticised for potentially stifling independent, non-corporate community services such as web forums. The BSI will play a major role in establishing and managing standards for internet privacy and safety in the UK, and this research into young people’s experiences of the internet form part of the arguments underpinning their approach to internet governance.
I got a big rejection today - of course, it’s part of the work, but this one in particular has me ruminating on what space I’m trying to carve out in the world. I keep coming back to my thoughts on the need for interactive, online, live art made by and for queer, disabled people. I wrote about this last year, and it’s as true as ever.
I feel drawn to make work that serves those of us at these intersections, and that addresses the need for a flourishing online arts and culture sector.
One of the things I’m enjoying about getting into the indie web and fediverse is that I have so much more agency over the form that my content takes.
Every social media platform inscribes a specific format. Many of them are defined by it, particularly in their early years, e.g. vertical short videos on Tiktok, square photos on Instagram, 140-character messages on Twitter. This has many benefits: it shapes the culture that emerges, and provides enough creative constraints to make the task of creating a post feel manageable.
A week ago, it was announced that former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg would be leaving his role at Meta, to be replaced by Republican Joel Kaplan. Clegg was responsible for the creation of Meta’s Oversight Board, and subsequent announcements have indicated decisive shifts in content moderation policies. In addition to ending its fact-checking programme, Meta has dropped its DEI programmes and changed its rules to permit hate speech on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, in response to what it calls “political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality”.