20-march-25 — Yunzhi / Melissa Li

Notes

08-06-2025

02-05-2025

16-04-2025

15-04-2025

06-04-2025

29-03-2025

20-03-2025

11-03-2025

11-03-2025

28-02-2025
21-02-2025
12-12-2024
29-07-2024
Bibilography

20 March 2025 - Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal

(Adelman et al. 2025)

There is a quiet ache in the way we remember spaces we never truly had. Reading “The Longing for Home” chapter of Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal feels like someone took the gut feeling I had while building my New Art City world and gave it context, breath and history. The chapter argues that digital nostalgia is often a longing not just for what was, but for what never really belonged to us. It draws from platforms that gathered communities such as Myspace, AsianAvenue and BlackPlanet, framing them not simply as tools but as emotional homeplaces that held special meaning for marginalised users. I think about the bunk bed in my installation, a stand-in for a home I can no longer define clearly. The text helps me understand that longing is a political, not merely sentimental, phenomenon.

It also reminds me why I keep recording small, easily overlooked stories: the smell of wet asphalt, the silly memories of after-school activities, mundane cooking and being with parents. These fragments belong to people whose voices are not usually archived in formal histories. By folding them into the web space, I’m trying to give shelter to memories that rarely find a stage.

Digital spaces once taught us to build homes through code, layouts and 3-D customisation. Myspace wasn’t just a profile: it was a bedroom wall in HTML, a diary we stitched together. Most current platforms want our engagement and data, not our stories. My act of draping Polycam scans over furniture carries that same tension, carving out safety and memory where the mainstream internet no longer welcomes building. This chapter convinces me to keep treating the installation as an engine for re-imagining home, rather than a museum for preserving it.