The link between archive and fever, illness, and nervous drives is underwritten in Jacques Derrida’s now often cited text Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Steedman). Yet, while the connection between psychic drives, futurity, and the early days of the computer all make an appearance in this text written in the mid 90s, the often-obfuscated imperial origins of data archives and the military are less apparent. Yet, the links between the war archive, the early days of the computer and cold war neuroses, early 20th century police forensic methods present in colonial projects (McCoy) and bourgeois culture (Sekula) all have shaped and modeled a body, by forming the outline of an ideal citizen (Ring). While the data sciences would like to throw off the human body altogether with its language games and fleshy eyes (Paglen), we must attune our ears to the hums of these from computers past.

Vanessa Gravenor is an Artistic Research Associate at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg where she is also a doctoral candidate. As an artist, she works primarily in video and film on the topics of entangled traumas, archives of war, and psychic narratives. She has held scholarships from the DAAD as a graduate student (2015–16); a Research and Create grant from Canada Council for the Arts (2020); NEUSTART Kultur (2022). Recently published articles: “Serious Dreaming: Virtual Violence and Its Dreamed Double” Third Text, Vol. 34, Issue 6 (2020) no. 167; “Against the Double Negative,” Rosa Mercedes, (2023) no. 5.

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