Died in your arms tonight (Shell’s Place Page 29)
This video documents what has become of a web page made by the user Shell on the free web-hosting service GeoCities, founded in 1995. Once a carefully considered web page that choreographed images and lyrics to a MIDI rendition of the 1986 classic rock song “Died in your arms tonight,” it now survives more than a decade later in a state of ruins. Missing image icons cascade about the page, the lyrics are difficult to read, and the audio file referenced in the work’s title is no longer supported in a modern browser, and must be brought up separately in a YouTube window. Through desktop performance, Lialina pays tribute to the devotion and earnestness of early GeoCities users, while also acknowledging the inevitable expiration that came with their creations.