The festival’s flagship exhibition considers notions of permanence associated with the web, repositioning the anti-archival and ephemeral qualities of digital memory as generative, reframing decay as a distinct but equal counterpart to growth.

What exists online will remain indexed forever—at least that’s what the ubiquity of the web might lead us to believe. But the digital realm we inhabit tells a different story: one populated with broken hyperlinks, dead websites, finite memory, and technology ceaselessly hurtling towards obsolescence. Rather than chase an imagined space of digital immortality, how might we begin to come to terms with the broken archival promises of digital media? What would it mean to give into the ecstatic euphoria of forgetting, with reverence for the deleted, the unarchived, and the unfound?

404_not_found, Vector Festival’s 2025 flagship exhibition, considers notions of permanence associated with the web, featuring works from Alicia Guo, Daze Jefferies, Alex Raja Ven, Ruby J Thelot, and Nara Wrigglesworth. These artists reposition the anti-archival and ephemeral qualities of digital memory as generative, reframing decay as a distinct but equal counterpart to growth