Rage Against the Archive

Rage Against the Archive is an experimental browser-based film that critically probes how the New York Public Library’s website catalogs, displays and even sells dehumanizing ethnographic photos from the 19th-century colonial-era publication "The People of India," questioning capitalism's infusion with the archival process. Part video and part performance documentation, Rage Against the Archive sees the artist corrupt the HTML code of the New York Public Library’s website in an act of Electronic Civil Disobedience. These digital interventions alter the texts accompanying images from this 19th-century ethnographic book in an effort to make visible the continuation of colonial power structures within contemporary digital archives.