This issue of Crawlspace arrives in typical conditions: later than we had anticipated, pushed uphill past many obstacles. These obstacles are generally unpredictable and unavoidable, and can feel almost mundane in their small scale, compared to the distresses of our personal worlds, especially when placed against a media backdrop that suggests ever-increasing global fear and suffering.

Usually, the delays in getting Crawlspace ready come down to many minute, very human, glitches: mismatched calendars, activities piling up and then falling into the fault lines of a to-do list app. The more I outsource my lists to yet another software dedicated to help with planning and remembering, the less in touch I seem to be with any sense of what I’m supposed to be doing next.

We turn to computers to store our memories for us, perceiving the shortcomings of our own capacity for recollection and direction. The human brain is estimated to have a memory capacity equivalent to 2.5 million gigabytes, yet we lose something close to 90% of new information within a week of ingesting it. We are also adept at corrupting what few memories we do keep: splicing separate events together, stitching false details into our pasts with ease.

But, it’s becoming clear that digital memory is just as fallible. Links rot in the soft tides of the internet, and once-presumed-enduring platforms disappear, taking all those stored memories with them. Earlier this year, a digital publication we had both been involved with over many years suddenly went dark. Aside from the initial panic about whether any of the essays and poetry hosted on the platform could be recovered, I was struck by the potential loss of proof of the successful collaborations, negotiations and consistent hard work that had been put into a creative endeavour for so long. These works are at once important artistic outputs as well as the documentation of the human labour and care that went into them. This publication gave us our first chances to work together, so the loss of some of that poetry would also represent a partial loss of the beginnings of a creative partnership and friendship that has led us here.

More dangerous still, it seems, is the potency of digital memory for intentional and malicious acts of corruption: weeks before we write this editorial, the new US administration removed thousands of government webpages housing important health, environmental and scientific information. Without critical attention and support for our archives (personal and collective), our memory falls under attack, twisted to become fodder that validates imperial capitalist agendas.

The pieces in this issue of Crawlspace each resonated with us for the way they reach through memories under glitch—in the self, in families, in cultures. These are works that blur and hide, both literally and within their poetic imagery, each evoking the covering and uncovering of memory. In some cases, this relationship to memory is treated as an intentional manifestation, in others it is an inevitable change, a current that moves through us like electricity.

We hope you enjoy this issue! We also think now is a great time to revisit the pieces in our back-issues, especially if you haven’t seen them before (or if you’d like to refresh your memory). As the archive of art on Crawlspace continues to grow, we feel a renewed sense of custodianship for the memories embedded within these web pages.

Thank you, we’ll be back soon!

– Rory Green and Hannah Jenkins, co-editors