Abstract
Multimedia artist Shu Lea Cheang's Brandon was supported by the Guggenheim Museum New York in 1995 as a multiauthor/multi-institutional collaboration. Created in response to the news of the Nebraska murder of transgender youth Brandon Teena in 1993, the project exists as a feminist hypertext and as such can be regarded as a living archive of transgender embodiment. Due to the work's current offline status, questions arise as to how it might be factored beyond its material presence, as a temporal placeholder for radical and affective archiving. Major sociocultural factors such as the introduction of the information super highway at the time of the project's creation allow for a topographical look at how digital codes and online interfacing factor as potential forms of emancipation regarding transgender embodiment and performativity.
