As part of the Counterstructures residency, Khoj is hosting a public talk, Does The Internet Ever Forget?, on October 28, 6-7pm, at Khoj Studios, with technology researcher and creative Mallika Dharmaraj and lawyer and researcher Divij Joshi.

The digital is no longer an extension but a condition–a collision of worlds and experiences that are not only decentred but multiplied without limit. Images, documents, and fragments of everyday life are continually produced, collected, and sanitised. At a moment characterized by an awakened public consciousness popularized through viral digital clips, there is unparalleled opportunity to both play with one’s memory and fabricate new ones. What data trains our models and how does knowledge become ‘data’ to begin? What becomes a memory? Who produces an archive? What, and whose, imaginaries and narratives of cultural and economic production do these technologies embody, and what does this mean for possibilities of participatory and inclusive practices/action?

Archives have long shaped what is preserved, what is forgotten, and whose experience counts as record. When AI systems inherit and interpret uneven archives and become bastions/custodians of collective memory, they shape not only what we remember but what futures seem possible. What is preserved? What is forgotten? Who authors the record? And who gets to contest it?

These are crucial questions to reckon with when we think of community and digital societies.

Drawing on their respective practices,  Mallika Dharmaraj and Divij Joshi will reflect on memory-making, multimedia art, archives and the realities of technological imaginaries in this moment of technological reckoning. Together they will open up questions about how we document experience, construct narratives, form communities and make sense of the worlds we inhabit.

Please note: Seating is limited and based on first-come first-serve basis. We request everyone to be seated by 5:45pm.