Nearly Viral transports the audience back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, a time when Internet culture was just beginning to take shape. Four Gen Y to Z artists: Ronan Mackenzie from Blackburn, England, Aled Simons from Cardiff, Wales, and Hou Lam Tsui and Samson Wong from Hong Kong aim to reflect their experiences as digital natives and explore the excitement and joy of our initial encounters with the virtual world, evoking nostalgia for a past that, though distant, feels recent.

 

By juxtaposing these diverse memories, the works will reveal how virtual phenomena have influenced individuals' perceptions of the physical world. By reinterpreting YouTube videos of teenagers obsessed with energy drinks, Simons critically examines online discourse through his unique visual language. Wong revisits the Year 2000 (“Y2K”) Problem of the late 1990s, exploring the fear and chaos associated with global shutdown of technologies. Mackenzie constructs a personal archive using the aesthetics of Frutiger Aero to investigate the space where online culture and personal memories intersect. Tsui draws from retro commercials and anime of East Asia, accessed from the internet, as well as personal footage to craft her own narrative about virtual relationships.