Brandon, 1998–99
Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954)
Interactive networked code (HTML, Java, Javascript, and server database)
Conserved, 2016
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, commissioned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and produced in association with the Waag Society for Old and New Media, the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University, and the Banff Centre, with additional funding from the Bohen Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Mondriaan Foundation, 2005.44

Brandon is an interactive, web-based work of art centered on the tragic story of Brandon Teena, a young transgender man who was raped and murdered in 1993. The participatory and changeable nature of the Internet reflects characteristics integral to the performance of gender and the mutability of identity.

Web technology, like all matter, is in a perpetual state of change. Over the years, Brandon’s features began to stop working; hyperlinks broke, images and text began to display incorrectly, and upgraded operating systems stopped supporting Brandon’s framework. In 2016 an interdisciplinary team of conservators and computer scientists collaborated to conserve the work, updating the code to operate with present- day technologies. Brandon’s interactivity parallels the iterative, participatory nature of conservation essential to its continued persistence, particularly in an ever-changing medium such as the Internet.