‘I began to know the fighting game community of New York while I was doing interviews for my 2011 film Codes of Honor, which is about a lone gamer recounting his past experiences in professional gaming. That work generally deals with a loss of history and the struggle to preserve tradition in a culture where the new sweeps away the old at a faster and faster pace. I saw the pro gamer as a contemporary tragic hero who strives for classic virtues in a hyperaccelerated age. The very thing the gamer attempts to master is constantly slipping away and becoming obsolete, which acutely reflects our contemporary condition.
‘When I held the pro gaming tournament at Zach Feuer in honor of the original Chinatown Fair arcade, which was the last great East Coast video arcade, it was as if the whole project had been leading up to that night. This was also true for the release on 4chan of my 2013 film Still Life (Betamale), a work that brings to light the darker fetishes of Internet subcultures—including furry fandom, kigurumi, and 8-bit anime. The community and the artist came face to face, and the reaction to the work was rich and varied. For instance, a 4chan user wrote:
this shit would have been cool in 2005 but you’re on goddamn 4chan in 2013, one of the biggest sites for “SUCH A LOSER ;_;” people to ever browse the internet
someone didn’t found out your dirty secret life and reveal it to everyone else
we’ve been doing it since the early/mid 2000’s
it isn’t special
get over it
‘Here the commenter is mocking my fetishization of these subcultures in classic 4chan style, while also revealing that sense that the moment you “discover” said culture it has already moved on. It also indirectly hints at the sublime feeling I every now and again experience when I’m surfing the Web and I suddenly discover a new community or fully formed subculture that has its own complex vocabulary and history. It’s this overwhelming sensation that there are subcultures within subcultures, worlds upon worlds upon worlds ad infinitum.
‘My earlier work is more romantic: There’s a flaneur-like gaze that crystallizes in the Google Street Views of Nine Eyes and the virtual safaris seen in the Kool-Aid Man in Second Life projects, for instance. As the Internet became a ubiquitous part of daily existence, I shared in the excitement of these new communities and was excited to explore the newly forming virtual worlds. Sometimes I see myself as a member of the community, but in many cases I approach the subcultures as if I were a passing explorer or an amateur anthropologist.
‘My latest videos and installations have a darker tone, delving into the murkier corners of the Web. What concerns me is the general sense of entrapment and isolation felt by many as social and political life becomes increasingly abstracted and experience dematerialized. There is no viable or compelling avenue for effecting change or emancipating consciousness, so the energy that once motivated revolution or critique gets redirected into strange and sometimes disturbing expressions.
‘I had planned to premiere my latest video, Mainsqueeze, in St. Louis for “The end of the end of the end,” but it was deemed too difficult and disturbing for the context of the exhibition. Some of the content, particularly the section with the “crush fetish,” in which a woman is depicted stepping on a live shellfish, is indeed difficult to watch. But I think the fetishes can evoke repressed desires as well as reveal latent societal tensions. There’s an underlying barbarism that can be found in daily life that I’m trying to capture. That said, I think the film is as beautiful and ironic, or postironic, as it is horrifying.
‘Currently, I’m developing a sculpture and installation series that has grown out of my intense interest in “troll caves,” which are the spaces inhabited by gamers during excessive hours in virtual reality. These spaces are actualized in a gallery environment and represent a borderland between the real and virtual. The troll caves contain a certain refined depravity that I find especially poignant today. They are at once abject and sublime spaces, revealing the material residue of a life completely dedicated to an online existence, and they point to the impossibility of total escape from physical reality.’ — Jon Rafman, ARTFORUM
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Stills
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Further
Jon Rafman’s site
9-Eyes Project
Jon Rafman’s Vimeo Channel
studio
Jon Rafman @ Twitter
Jon Rafman @ Instagram
Video: Artist Talk: Jon Rafman
Video: Jon Rafman : Performative Lecture : 04.09.14.
Jon Rafman @ Seventeen Gallery
Surreal, disturbing, NSFW and utterly thrilling: the work of Jon Rafman
‘Codes of Honor’
Jon Rafman’s “Codes of Honor’ @ Rhizome
Jon Rafman’s Second Life art
I have ten thousand compound eyes and each is named suffering
Jon Rafman and the World’s Hungriest Fetish
Skyrim Sunsets: Artist JON RAFMAN on Exploring VR with the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2
Revealing Jon Rafman by Lindsay Howard
Jon Rafman interviewed @ Purple
Artist Jon Rafman Is the Only Real Reason to See ‘Robocop’
NINE EYES: AN INTERVIEW WITH JON RAFMAN
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The Nine Eyes of Google Street View
by Jon Rafman
from ARTFCITY
Two years ago, Google sent out an army of hybrid electric automobiles, each one bearing nine cameras on a single pole. Armed with a GPS and three laser range scanners, this fleet of cars began an endless quest to photograph every highway and byway in the free world.
Consistent with the company’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” this enormous project, titled Google Street View, was created for the sole purpose of adding a new feature to Google Maps.
Every ten to twenty meters, the nine cameras automatically capture whatever moves through their frame. Computer software stitches the photos together to create panoramic images. To prevent identification of individuals and vehicles, faces and license plates are blurred.
Today, Google Maps provides access to 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic views (from a height of about eight feet) of any street on which a Street View car has traveled. For the most part, those captured in Street View not only tolerate photographic monitoring, but even desire it. Rather than a distrusted invasion of privacy, online surveillance in general has gradually been made ‘friendly’ and transformed into an accepted spectacle.
One year ago, I started collecting screen captures of Google Street Views from a range of Street View blogs and through my own hunting. This essay illustrates how my Street View collections reflect the excitement of exploring this new, virtual world. The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording, and even the vastness of the project. At the same time, I acknowledge that this way of photographing creates a cultural text like any other, a structured and structuring space whose codes and meaning the artist and the curator of the images can assist in constructing or deciphering. …
The way Google Street View records physical space restored the appropriate balance between photographer and subject. It allowed photography to accomplish what culture critic and film theorist Siegfried Kracauer viewed as its mission: “to represent significant aspects of physical reality without trying to overwhelm that reality so that the raw material focused upon is both left intact and made transparent.”
This infinitely rich mine of material afforded my practice the extraordinary opportunity to explore, interpret, and curate a new world in a new way. To a certain extent, the aesthetic considerations that form the basis of my choices in different collections vary. For example, some selections are influenced by my knowledge of photographic history and allude to older photographic styles, whereas other selections, such as those representing Google’s depiction of modern experience, incorporate critical aesthetic theory. But throughout, I pay careful attention to the formal aspects of color and composition. — (cont.)
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Interview
from KALEIDOSCOPE blog!
Aids3d: As an artist you’ve got a lot of different things going on. Do you think it’s important as an artist to have a seemingly cohesive body of work, or at least some kind of delineation between different sub-practices. Could you outline some structure that organizes your practice as a whole?
Jon Rafman: What ties my practice together is not so much a particular style, form, or material but an underlying perception of contemporary experience and a desire to convey this understanding. One theme that I am continually interested in is the way technology seems to bring us closer to each other while simultaneously estranging us from ourselves. Another one is the quest to marry opposites or at least have conversations between them, the past and the present, the romantic and the ironic, even though these conversations often end in total clashes. All my work tends to combines irony, humor and melancholy.
A3D: How do you think an idea of territorialism fits in to your work.? I mean this in a few ways, 1st literally, in Google Street Views and Second Life tours, you’re literally exploring pubic spaces and sorta claiming them for your practice.
JR: If I use a public space for a critical or creative purposes, I view it as “my territory.” Yet it is mine no more or no less than that of any other artist.
A3D: But I also wonder about whether or not you believe in any idea of artistic territory, or is this an increasingly outmoded way of categorizing artistic practice? (In the sense that Seth Price owns vacuum sealed ropes or Cory Arcangel owns Nintendo hacks)
JR: Personally I find it outmoded, but as an artist it is very important to be aware of what came before you, otherwise you might make references in your work without being conscious of it. I do think it is important to ‘own’ your work in that sense.
A3D: Being a bit open and dilettantish is obviously easier than ever, but do you think that it is a good move for a young artist just starting a career? I wonder this myself, as we’ve jumped around a whole lot in 5 years of work, and I’ve heard many times that its hard to see a visual continuity within aids-3d.
JR: I don’t quite see it that way. I see a definite continuity, both visual and conceptual, in Aids-3d. But I think we struggle with similar issues of not fitting easily into an artistic type or genre. The themes running through our work are consistent, yet we are just always looking for different modes of expressing them? I am constantly searching for an ideal, be it a girl, a mentor, the sublime, while simultaneously trying to reveal the sadness that accompanies the loss of these ideals or the failure to achieve them.
A3D: You’ve started getting some success in the art market in the past year or so, do you think that the “market forces” will lead you towards a more crystalized and apparent Jon Rafman style, or do you think that commercial support could allow you to be even more experimental?
JR: I don’t think I will ever be able to settle on any one way of making work even if I ever have huge market success. If a Jon Rafman style develops it won’t be the result of a conscious effort. Although financial success would help make it easier for me to afford to make things that I would not otherwise be able to. For example, l would love to create a real life Malevich Ducati or make a feature length film. Money would allow me to be more experimental in that way.
A3D: I think that maybe the most crucial element in your work, do you have different rules when you’re exploring Second Life versus Google Street View?
JR: The rules are constantly evolving and changing and I often only become aware of them in retrospect. This may not be what you have in mind, but if I were to give any rule I think the main one that guides me is the desire to find or produce something genuinely new without necessarily knowing what it is in advance. I really want to create something that can both act on the future and the past; an art that is new and yet finds continuity with art history. I think that a new art re-works and transforms, retrospectively, the history of art.
We went to see an excellent Post Modernism exhibition at the V&A in London together and I remember you reached a point when you started getting depressed because it was so clear that so much of the stuff going on right now amongst our peers was a just a repetition of what had already happened. Now I think that gloomy feeling is valid because, on one level, repetition is a form of regression, for as we move further and further away from the original source our consciousness of the historical condition lessens. But there is also an emancipatory character to repetition if the repetition is made explicit. Maybe as artists we are continually driven to re-attain lost moments in art history but in new ways.
A3D: I can see how one might take the poignant and sometimes tragic subject matter of your Google Street Views as being a bit exploitative (clearly the people depicted have given no consent). Do you feel that you have the same responsibilities towards your subjects as a traditional street photographer might have? Does the technological mediation give you a free pass to depict whatever you find?
JR: I believe I advocate the total autonomy of the artist to capture or create whatever he or she may please, even though I know that this is an aspiration rather than an achieved state. I think it is important to be conscious of the potential exploitative nature of one’s art but I also think that, if you start making decisions based on political or moral correctness, your art ceases to be autonomous.
Yet, I think all artists have to take responsibility for their creation. And that it is very possible for an artist not to actually see the truth in their work, it is possible for a photographer to be blind towards what he is photographing. A classic example of this in film is in the movie Blow Up. At first, the protagonist does not see the actual murder taking place in his photo. In order to see the reality in your work, you have to be worthy of it and truly to committed to the your creations. The moral and epistemological perspectives are intertwined. For me, that means that in order to see the truth in my Street View photos, I have to be open to the inherent violence in them. I think whenever you capture something in art or writing you are doing violence to a certain extent because you are wrenching it from the constant flow of inchoate reality.
A3D: Recently, we both attended the #OWS protest in London. Maybe we can detour and talk about that for a little bit… I’ve always been especially taken by this one Critical Art Ensemble quote from their text Electronic Civil Disobedience, “CAE has said it before, and we will say it again: as far as power is concerned, the streets are dead capital! Nothing of value to the power elite can be found on the streets, nor does this class need control of the streets to efficiently run and maintain state institutions.”
JR: I think if the streets had a coherent ideology with a revolutionary consciousness that assertion would be untrue, but the truth is that a politically effective Left has been dead for a long time now. I think this supposed renaissance of the Left can easily lead to a even further disintegration or splintering of what remains of the Left. But just to back up a little bit, I think it is important to talk about the roots of the #OWS movement and recent leftist history in order to grasp it clearly. For me, the #Occupy movement shares many similarities to the anti-globalization movements of the 1990s, most clearly expressed in the anti-WTO protests in Seattle at the turn of the millennium. For instance both movements were spearheaded by anarchist groups and have been supported by the labor movement. Both movements were “leaderless” and expressed a populist discontent. A major theme of the “post-New left”, “post-ideological” 1990s-era Left was, as in the current #Occupy movements, resistance/reaction rather than pressing for concrete liberal reforms let alone real revolution.The standard narrative is that the 90s anti-globalization movement faded out after the 9/11 attacks and became focused on attacking the Bush administration and Israel during the “War on Terror” era. But the #OWS movement is not objecting to neo-conservatism and US imperialism as in the 2000s, but to neo-liberalism and capitalism in general. While I do think that the shift away from a politics based on opposing US hegemony towards one that is based on critiquing capitalism as a whole is a good one, I do not think that any form of coherent emancipatory politic is guiding the movement. Over the past half century there has been a profound banalization and degeneration of revolutionary politics. All problems cannot simply be blamed on corruption or greed. The anti-intellectual strain in anarcho politics coming out of the #OWS movement is partly a result of the desire to reject the grand-narratives of the Old Left. There is now a conflation of lifestyle choices with political action and very little attempt to form structural critiques of capitalism. Micropolitics have totally supplanted macropolitics. I understand that there is an appealing optimism to the localist impuse, but I think behind the lightness of culture jamming and everyday politics of resistance lies something darker, a profound cynicism and sense that there is nothing ‘outside’ the current social order. There is a real despair at the failure of past revolutionary struggles which has resulted in a almost inescapable skepticism of any totalizing politics. The practice of everyday resistance (buying local/organic?) seems a lot easier and safer than methodological struggle of building a sustained alternative ideological world view. But that said, there is definitely a new possibility to articulate the current situation that I don’t think was possible while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were raging. Yet I have seen no clear articulation of the situation by any political leaders or movements. The #OWS movement is raising some issues that have been out of the public sphere for a little while. Like what would it mean to challenge the very structure of society? It is clear that we do not live in the best of possible worlds. Yet how could a new global political movement meet these concerns in practice? At this moment in time, I cannot imagine an revolutionary ideology good enough to meet the historical possibilities of our moment. Even conceiving the possibilities for radical transformation today is truly challenging for me.
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Videos
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Kool-Aid Man in Second Life, Tour Promo (2009)
‘If you’re in the middle of an existential crisis, this video by artist Jon Rafman of the Kool-Aid Man meandering through various user-created realms of Second Life might be just the thing to shake you out of it. Or conversely, if your life is boring as hell and you need a little existential crisis up in your bizness, this might get that process kick-started. Really, I’m pretty sure it can work either way.’ — D.Billy
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Woods of Arcady (2010)
‘Woods of Arcady is about a fictional virtual world modeled after World of Warcraft.’
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You, the World and I (2010)
‘When Orpheus’ beloved Eurydice dies, he cajoles his way into the underworld with his musical charms and his lyre. Wanting her but not her shade, he cannot forbear looking back to physically see her and so loses her forever. In this modern day Orphean tale, an anonymous narrator also desperately searches for a lost love. Rather than the charms of the lyre, contemporary technological tools, Google Street View and Google Earth, beckon as the pathway for our narrator to regain memories and recapture traces of his lost love. In the film, they are as captivating and enthralling as charming as any lyre in retrieving the other: at first they might seem an open retort to critics of new technology who bemoan the lack of the tangible presence of the other in our interactions on the Internet.’ — JR
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Remember Carthage (2012)
‘An essay film in the tradition of experimental documentarians like Chris Marker or Harun Farocki, Remember Carthage takes the viewer on an epic journey in search of an abandoned resort town deep in the Sahara desert. However, one travels not through archival or personal images but through footage sourced from PS3 video games and Second Life, depicting ancient civilizations that seem at once familiar and totally fantastical. Remember Carthage is a first-person journey through a historical fantasia that highlights the fictionalizing and exoticization of culture within gaming and virtual worlds.’ — New Museum
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In the Realms of Gold (2012)
‘In Jon Rafman’s series of enchanting and hypnotic videos inspired by poetic masterpieces, images of extreme technological modernity contrast with virtual representations of bucolic, idyllic and classical landscapes. In The Realms of Gold, alternative possibilities are explored as a first person shooter video meets a nature documentary. Rafman’s video evokes the world of the hero-shooter intent on defeating the other, yet it lingers on pastoral scenes of exquisite beauty. The narrative it contains is implied but is never revealed. Thus Rafman continues his exploration of the impact of our interactions in the cyber and virtual world on notions of our notions of beauty and alienation, nostalgia and loss, and decay and destruction.’ — Purple
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Imago (an incomplete work) (2013)
‘Over the years, I’ve learned that if you want to take a top-selling photo, it must have a universal quality to it – you need to avoid any specifics that define the image too narrowly. Everyone must be able to read themselves into the photos, but at the same time engage in the purist form of escapism. It’s not as easy as it sounds, ‘cause as a stock photographer you have no predetermined client or audience, no precise idea of who will be buying your photos.’ — JR
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A Man Digging (2013)
‘In Jon Rafman’s newest film, A Man Digging, a virtual flaneur undertakes an evocative journey through the uncanny spaces of video game massacres. In a re-visioning of the game Max Payne 3, Rafman radically transforms the role of the player. He now encounters the digital landscapes not as a numb fighter, but as a human who is touched by death and gore, even when it is rendered banal in its ubiquity. Divorced from their original context, the slaughtered bodies take on a dull, inarticulate violence that is disquieting. Through a film that becomes a de-sensationalized spectacle, Rafman confronts both the danger of passively aestheticizing the wreckage of the past, and the romantic fixation on death as a placeholder for meaning.’ — DIS Magazine
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Annals of Time Lost (2013)
‘Google’s description of its mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful is consistent with the archival notion of accumulating everything; the will to enclose all eras, all forms, in a virtual place of all times that is itself outside of time. The project of organizing an infinite accumulation of our virtual lives betrays the desire to overcome the foundational and universal experience of loss. In Annals of Time Lost Jon Rafman engages with this utopian quest for the complete archive coupled with the anxiety around its ultimate impossibility.’ — Future Gallery
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Still Life (Betamale) + Oneohtrix Point Never (2013)
‘“As you look at the screen, it is possible to believe you are gazing into eternity,” says an absent, artificial female voice in the beginning of Jon Rafman‘s NSFW Still Life (Betamale) (2013) video. “You see the things that were inside you. This is the womb, the original site of the imagination. You do not move your eyes from the screen, you have become invisible.” Still Life (Betamale) confronts some of humanity’s newer and more obsessive activities, all things that may be unique to the web (though we’re never sure). The video sets the stage with shots of disgustingly lived-at computer desks covered in bits of food and cigarette ashes, surrounded by energy drinks and dirty dishes. The main character, the fat man with panties covering his face, pointing two guns at his own head, is leading us on a nearly psychosis-inducing stream of various types of fetish and subculture porn — some of the web’s darkest and strangest corners. This is not the safe and corporate internet of Facebook or Google; Still Life (Betamale) is drawn from the visually overloaded world of 4chan, as obsessively browsed by a man who lives in his mother’s basement.’ — hyperallergic
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Mainsqueeze (2014)
‘Hundreds of people stuck in a giant swimming pool passively floating to the rhythm of artificial waves. The poor resolution of the found footage muddles them into a contextless and faceless crowd. Nobody tries to escape the crowd, or go against the current. They are trapped but happy enough. It’s like Dante’s Inferno but without the drama. Just the people floating in the mud. The final scene of Mainsqueeze captures “a contemporary atmosphere or mood” which sets the present as a time out of joint, encapsulated by the washing machine that tears itself apart over the course of the film. Rafman poses the present escape from the real towards the simulated as the result of a general feeling of turmoil that leads to flight rather than revolt. In the video, the first readable line of text is written on the forehead of a sleeping drunk man at the beginning of the film: “LOSER”. He smiles, and we are led to wonder who the loser really is. Yet Rafman is not making a particular ethical statement: “Mainsqueeze expresses a moral condition or atmosphere without making a moral judgment. I gravitate towards communities like 4chan because I see in them a compelling mix of attraction and repulsion. This ambivalence is reflected in the current cultural moment.”’ — DIS Magazine
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NEON PARALLEL (1996, 2015)
‘THE FOLLOWING VIDEO WAS DISCOVERED AMONG A STACK OF OLD VHS TAPES AT A GARAGE SALE IN EAST RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY. IT WAS SUBSEQUENTLY PUT UP FOR AUCTION ON EBAY.COM, WHERE I BID ON IT AND WON. THE CASSETTE WAS MARKED ネオン平行 1996. NOTHING ELSE IS KNOWN ABOUT ITS ORIGINS. IT IS PRESENTED HERE IN ITS UNALTERED FORM. ‘ — JR
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Sticky Drama + Oneohtrix Point Never (2016)
‘In his latest work, Jon Rafman has worked in collaboration with Daniel Lopatin to create his first fully live-action short movie featuring a cast of over 35 children, developed and shot in London over the summer and fall. The video brings to life a fantastical world in which characters are on a quest, battling for dominance and in a race against time to archive past histories.’ — Michael Nardone
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Open Heart Warrior (2016)
‘Let your muscles become loose and relaxed, starting with your feet… your ankles….lower legs….knees…. upper legs….pelvis….torso… back….shoulders….arms…. hands….face….and head. Turn your attention now to your breathing. Notice each breath, without trying to change your breathing in any way…. Just observe…. As thoughts arise, acknowledge them and let them go, returning your attention to your breathing…. ‘ — JR
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Poor Magic (2017)
‘Some hundreds of years may have passed. I don’t know. AM has been having fun for some time, accelerating and retarding my time sense. He made certain I would suffer eternally and could not do myself in. He left my mind intact. I can dream, I can wonder, I can lament. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone.’ — JR
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Legendary Reality (2017)
‘One day I’m sitting at Ben’s Deli when his voice comes over the loudspeakers, sewing together everything that I observe. Whatever the music touches gets embedded in an immense tapestry. And he is in it––a figure framed by the city.
‘Late at night, when I look out at the buildings, I see a face in every window looking back at me. When I turn away, I wonder how many go back to their desks and write this down.
‘I have not seen him in years now, but his words are in my blood and veins. They rise up in me and fuse together the horizontal and the vertical.’ — JR
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SHADOWBANNED (2018)
‘I don’t know why I’m writing you. I don’t even care if you read this. I don’t think of you anymore. But still, for some reason, there is something to say. This is not a story. There are no more stories.’ — JR
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Disasters Under the Sun (2019)
‘In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.’ — JR
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DREAM JOURNAL 2016 – 2019 + James Ferraro + Oneohtrix Point Never (2019)
‘All I want is a dreamless sleep’. — JR
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p.s. RIP Michael Snow ** CAUTIVOS, Hi. As far as I can tell, I can put as many images and videos in a blog post as I want. Nothing has ever told me to stop. It’s really not complicated at all once you get the hang. It’s just time consuming. Gifts, today? Like what? Anything surprise you? No, Alex James was a fascination of mine in the mid-90s, but I haven’t paid any attention to him since. Warmest from Paris. ** Jack Skelley, Oh, my god, you’re right!!!!! ** Minet, Hi! Manson is very cringe. Saw your email. Thank you! Yesterday was crazy, so I haven’t looked into your work yet, but I’m excited to immediately. ** Dominik, Hi!!! My pleasure. I made it ages ago, but I remember it being fun to make. Yeah, I kept telling Grove Press, ‘You’re not going to cross me over, trust me’, but they thought so, god love them, but then by the time of ‘Period’ I think they finally gave up. Ha ha, I had a strong instinct that you were going to pick Gerard Way. *patting myself on the back* Apparently he does paint or at least draw. Check it out. I’m happy to know about that alternate universe. Whew! Love called into the unexciting practical duty of making a few things that are falling apart about Zac’s and my film project stop falling apart right now, G. ** scunnard, Hi, Jared! I totally agree. That was basically my impetus. How’s stuff? ** Tosh Berman, Thank you so very much, Tosh! Hugs. ** alex, Hey, hey, alex! Cool, yeah, the brief guessing game format of the post was the main thing that made it worth doing, I think. When I was a kid I wrote a lot, but I also made drawings and paintings all the time. When I was in high school, I was known around school as an artist more than as a writer because I made posters for the school dances and painted a mural on campus. But those were the psychedelic days where you could get away with just being imaginative and trippy. In college, I took art classes and realised pretty quickly that I basically had no talent, and I gave up. Thankfully. Interesting about your art making. Do you get close to the satisfaction from making art that you do from writing? Do you think it’s something you’ll continue to do long term? It’s gray as gray can be here. Did you get some writing done? That’s my plan for own personal gray today. ** Steve Erickson, Ha ha. What do you want to bet that someone out there is feeding that post into AI as we type? ** Nightcrawler, Hi there! Obviously, I’m super happy to have provided that information. His poetry is quite good too, as you probably know. ** Misanthrope, Ah, so I was right! What were the odds. It means you’re secretly psychotic, George. Eep, indeed. Get on your own stuff, for goodness sake, yes. ** Nick., Hey, Nick.! Glad you liked it. A nicer Dr. Manhattan? Not too much nicer, I hope. It does sound like if we teamed up, we’d have everything covered, and the world would be our … canvas? Favorite teacher … in my brief time at university it was this poet/poetry teacher named Bert Meyers who got fed up with me going on and on about Rimbaud all the time and one day just grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me up against some lockers and told me that if I really wanted to be ‘great’ poet I should quit university immediately and go live a daring life and just write and stop with the bullshit, and I realised he was right, and I did. Otherwise I think I would just say I got taught importantly by artists who made really daring, experimental work without any compromise. There have been a bunch of those. Do you have a favorite or important teacher or teachers in your present or past? Thanks for asking, my friend. ** Robert, Yes, I guess McCartney was joking. I do remember searching pretty hard for a painting by him with a boner in it and coming up empty. How are you? ** h now j, Hi! Thank you. I just told alex up above about my thwarted artistic youthful dreams. Now, no, I never ever paint. And I only draw little doodads when I sign my books sometimes. Thank you for the advance b’day wishes. I am really not looking forward to this birthday, so I am trying to pretend it isn’t happening. But I’ll probably have dinner with friends or something very lowkey on the day, I guess. Almost vegan describes me too. I’m vegan for periods, and then I miss cheese too much, and I revert to vegetarian again. Yes, I eat basically one of three things every single day, and it’s gotten so I don’t mind at all. Have a really wonderful weekend. ** Right. Maybe some or, dare I even hope, all of you will be interested by Jon Rafman’s videos and stuff. Time to find out, if you haven’t already. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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This is a diverse and fascinating body of work. I tend not to be a fan of the video game look, but what Rafman does with it is very interesting.
Just saw Olivier Smolders’ haunting short Axolotl. Was this one of your recommendations, Dennis? Very nice.
[Maybe first, this time]
Bill
Hi Dennis. Fantastic post on your blog. I think Alex James still has some sex appeal. I wouldn’t mind having something with him. It’s been a long time since you wrote Guide and Alex doesn’t seem to have a picture in his attic of him growing older, like in Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is barely 54 years old and the years do not pass in vain. His frenzy has gone down but he still has a good romp in bed. So he didn’t come to interview you? It’s a shame he was scared like that, he must have seen something in you that didn’t fit in his youthful mind. You have always been very friendly with me. Hugs.
Dennis Would you recommend me to Antonin Artaud?
Hi there Dennis,
I love this post, and the post before it, and all the ones I’ve read before that! Particularly struck by yesterday’s painting post — so many goodies in there. I’m a writer and a painter, so it was fun to see a list of people juggling a few creative pursuits. If you want to see my paintings, I pop them here — https://www.instagram.com/didyoubrushyourteethtoday2/
Love your work, deeply.
From,
Aus!
Hi Dennis, I’m doing pretty good, how are you? Hope the weather over there isn’t as gloomy as it is here in Chicago, haha. And hope you make it through your birthday alright too, that sounds brutal and unenviable. I remember my dad always telling me the story about how Paul McCartney became a vegetarian when I was younger (apparently he was eating lamb and looked out his window and saw a couple of live ones frolicking in the pasture and then gave it up) so I’ve always liked him for that.
“Here the commenter is mocking my fetishization of these subcultures in classic 4chan style, while also revealing that sense that the moment you “discover” said culture it has already moved on.” Sort of the tricky part about trying to do cultural critique stuff in writing even on a broader scale, or at least every time I think about trying to vent irritation with how everything’s going I realize it’ll be totally different by the time I finish, and that I’d be letting myself get sucked in to something ridiculous.
And I know I harp and moan here a lot so sorry to be a one-track-bummer but good god how are you supposed to meet people in your early twenties? I came out of college with very few friends who’re scattered all over the country now, and it’s tempting to enroll in grad school somewhere just to meet people. I try to go to the book festivals/etc. stuff but the other kids you meet there end up mainly being harry potter readers, or at best NYT-y stuff, and I hope I’m not being a pretentious dick but the people I’ve met with those interests always seem to end up just being of a different social crowd altogether. Gets me nervous how I’d ever even attempt to get anything published without contacts, and I worry that I’m deadening my own thinking without people to talk about this kind of stuff with, but I’m just thinking about all this because I got a crazy 2,000 page biography of Faulkner that has been an absolute blast so far, and it seems like he spent his twenties doing this pretty cool vagabond-y thing back and forth between friends in different cities. Anyway there’s your daily dose of self-indulgent/pitying/defeating/etc. angst. I think I’ll get a part-time job at a grocery store.
Hey Dennis,
Very cool post, never heard of Jon Rafman before so thanks for sharing his work. A lot of what he says about the internet connecting people while dematerializing them rings true for me so I’m excited to dive in to his videos. And those gifs with the squiggly effect remind me a bit of the visual auras I get before a migraine, disconcertingly trippy.
The Google street view stuff is great. Some of them feel deeply familiar, though I guess screenshots from street view have become almost a genre unto themselves. Have you heard of that guy rainbolt who (often correctly) guesses locations based off of like 0.5 seconds of a street view photo? Real virtual wizardry.
That’s neat that you painted a mural, do you remember what it looked like? I’m imagining lots of paisley fractals. Writing definitely gives me a greater personal satisfaction in that it feels like a release to get words out. But with printmaking, like other visual art I suppose, it’s much easier to share with others which is satisfying in its own way. I’d like to keep doing it for sure, it scratches a different itch and keeps my hands busy.
The grayness won out yesterday so I’m gonna get down to writing this evening. Hope your dreary writing day went well!
Hi!!
This is some freaky and fantastic body of work above. I didn’t know what my sluggish and grumpy mind needed tonight. But now I do. Thank you ever so much for this post!
Perfectly guessed about Gerard! I’m not well versed in the world of comic books, but I really like his style – and especially how passionate he is about his art (or his art too, I should say).
What’s happening with your and Zac’s film? Your task for love wasn’t reassuring at all. When are you going to L.A.?
Love inviting you to join that attractive Rod Stewart fan club Google Street Views rendered immortal, Od.
I’m new to Jon Rafmans but his work is wonderful. I need to get myself back on eBay to see if I can find anything so hauntingly strange as NEON PARALLEL.
Today has been my first day out of bed for a few days, so I’m slowly getting used to the outside world. This infection has been zapped by antibiotics. Another problem though is that my glasses have been snapped, leaving me unable to view the TV screen. I have Flux Gourmet ready to go, but will just have to wait, sigh.
Hi Dennis, I’m good… although a lot more sedentary since the accident, haha but actually taking advantage of the forced inactivity since surgery. I’m doing a lot of proofing now and the book has a go ahead for the beginning of June so that is exciting and working with the designers on cover images and things like that which always makes it seem more real. Talking with Mayhew again and sounds like we might do another interview for the book, which would be cool and now I need to start thinking about that kind of stuff again and reaching out to reviewers and that sort of stuff although book reviews also seem like kind of a dying breed in general which is a bit sad and feels really counterintuitive to me. Any interest in hosting a welcome to the world for this one at some point? Also, nice Jon Rafman day and he had a great show in London years ago and I read a lot of student essay about him, which always makes me feel like I must be doing something right, no? And also I like the image for Room Temperature!
Dear Dennis, my name is Caesar. I live in Argentina, I am a great admirer of your work. My favorite books of yours are The Sluts and Try (I’m always looking for similar books or things) It’s a pity that you are not being republished in Spanish. Your books are unreadable so I am forced to improve my English to be able to read you.
It’s crazy for me to find this blog of yours. I find it a delirium. I have a couple of questions to ask you if you don’t mind:
1) Do you have Twitter?
2) Are there any contemporary writers doing work like yours? That is to say, talk about queer, death, desire, the rotten. That is raw and visceral. If the answer is no, please tell me about authors who come close to what you do, even if they are not contemporary.
3) Which authors inspired your writing?
4) Some series and movies that are in the line of your work (yes, I’m looking forward to something that really disturbs me).
5) Do you have Letterboxd?
I apologize for so many questions and my poor English and thank you very much for your attention.
PS: Please come to Buenos Aires someday!!!
PS: Do you like anime? recommend some things if the answer is yes.
Rafman is such a genius, I still vividly remember seeing his work for the first time as a young teen on Tumblr, and that fucking Sticky Drama video! Watched when it dropped and it was the coolest thing my silly kid brain had ever seen. As a former Second Life/IMVU aficionado that era of his resonates a lot as well. Legendary stuff.
Yay, great that you got the e-mail, tell me your thoughts when you can. Hope yesterday wasn’t too crazy, is it the film stuff? Making movies is the toughest thing ever, as a film student I would know, especially nowadays, right? Read that even Sofia Coppola’s been having a tough time raising money for her things, lol. I’m sure you’ll get it done and it’ll be as great as Cattle and Green Light though, manifesting it now.
xxx
rafman is a bit of a bore in terms of post-internet, digital, conceptual art, with a habit of plundering content from various sources not always with the best intent… also there was the whole 2020 situation https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/arts/design/hirshhorn-museum-jon-rafman.html
Earlier today, I asked Chat GPT to write death metal lyrics from the perspective of a serial killer with corpses rotting under his basement. It refused, three times in a row. I guess the creators are being very cautious – when I asked it to write battle rap lyrics a few weeks ago, they were suitable for 12-year-olds.
But the next step would be feeding AI the music of vanity rock bands by actors like David Duchovny, Russell Crowe and Kiefer Sutherland and asking it to make “celebrity music.”
Rafman’s use of fetish imagery strikes me as glibly ironic, but IN THE REALM OF GOLD is just stunning. Looks like an animated water-color painting.
Any plans for the weekend? I hope to catch M3GAN. I’m writing 6 album reviews this month – two are already completed, and three are rough drafts I’m trying to finish – so I’m very busy at the moment.
Dennis, Great stuff today. Those street views are insane.
Ha! You wouldn’t be the first to suggest that re: my secret psychosis.
My friend of 30 years will often mention my youth and how I was a “psycho.” Hahaha. I guess I’ve mellowed. 😉
Thanks! Yeah, some things have been a brewin’. I have a few friends who are like, I’m blocked and have been for a long time and I hate it. And here’s me thinking (God, I hope I’m not jinxing myself now, hahaha), yeah, well, I’ve got tons of things in my brain that need to get out, almost too many. But yes, I’m on it. Or them.
Hope your weekend is swell. I’m just looking to chill. And work on that stuff.
Hi! Love theses pics especially the one of the girl with the red bag I’ve always wondered where she was going since I’ve seen it. And wow really great teacher to have and that sounds like such a movie moment to have with a teacher since it really changed your life it seems! Ive gotten along really well with alot of my teachers, they always tried to challenge me and treated me better than all the kids I was around. One of my all time favorites would have to be my high school philosophy and homeroom teacher Mr. Drelexer(almost certainly spelled wrong). We’d talk about shows and life and he taught me a lot about philosophy in a really fun way and I wrote a paper on mustard gas for the banality of evil and he loved it which I really appreciated! And yeah I think there wouldn’t be any problems left if we painted the canvas right maybe one day. Okay new question what’s your perfect date? What would you do? what would you eat? and when would it end or not? or just a really good one you’ve been on is fine too. Hope your day was great and you’re doing well! And thanks for calling me a friend in my head you were already a friend of mine when I started reading your books and stuff so means a lot! Hope you’re getting some rest too!
hi 😀 uh I hope this doesn’t bother you, I sent a comment yesterday and I probably sent it after you read the blog because I take forever to do things. I’m just going to copy and paste what I wrote because I have nothing interesting to say today other than I lethargically worked on the draft of my book while listening to fast paced breakcore and Witch house stuff.
Past me!! ⩡⩡⩡
A BROWNIE CAMERA WAIT REALLY??
right where I’m sitting, I’m looking right at a little wind-up brownie camera on top of my bookshelf. Thats so amazing and ironically funny because I remember becoming consumed by comparing the quality with other older photos so I could find out what type of camera it was, unbeknownst to me, I had the same type sitting dormant in my room😠! Yeah, maybe it is just how the photo aged that made it look really fascinating to me, it sort of reminds me of this song by Jeff Mangum that I’m obsessed with, or something idk but … it’s a good photo though, he’s very photogenic and his style is swag. (Though that’s the only photo I’ve seen but I’m sure it holds true) Sadly, I’ve yet to utilize the camera I have, as the film I need is hard to come by. I got it at a yard sale for 20$ and it came with the crumbling manual as well as a roll of film but that smelled like milk and didn’t work. I love collecting old cameras, well sort of, my collection is still rather small. I had this old over the shoulder Panasonic camcorder from 1986 but my cat knocked it over and the handle broke, so I have to fix that. I’m not sure if they still make film for that specific camera type but maybe I can find a substitute or something because I would love to film something with it.
There’s something so beautiful and delicate about film that I think can capture vulnerability like a snow globe, pulling you into one’s brutal yet sensitive mind until you have completely absorbed them, understanding every emotion, but then the globe violently shakes, and their composures break into undetermined fragments, leaving you bewildered as the character you once thought you knew in the span of 90 minutes becomes this distorted fantasy with no resemblance to what that was…. Or at least that’s how I’d like to make a film Haha!
What is your favorite kind of movies? I used to be obsessed with Michael Haneke and Harmony Korine. I’d love one day to make a movie, there’s really only one I would make, and I’ve been working on it for 5 years or so because the character I created is so important to me.
(Oh, also I don’t drink coffee in public. Too awkward.)
(Btw I actually really enjoy writing here when my day is over, it’s almost like a daily writing prompt or something ha-ha anyways goodnight!)
hi dennis! how’ve you been? i hope things are going great with the film and everything else 🤍 oooo i really love rafman, dream journal’s my favorite! i watch it all the time to relax. it’s kind of like i-be area for me where it’s really interesting for all the art reasons but also just speaks its own language that you can get lulled into/drift along with? i love art that’s like that, like so radical or unique you can only catch on like every other word. have you seen any of his new ai stuff, they’re super interesting. they’re also pretty in a way his work has never been before in my opinion, like it’s showing me a different side to the guy! i’ve always thought of him as a straight conceptualist but his eye’s actually really great.
also can i ask you some questions! i’ve been holding back all my dorky ones because i didn’t want to be intrusive, but nick told me that was dumb and overthinky so i’ll maybe be more obviously interested in everything about you, like the way i really kind of am. did you talk to anyone when you first started writing the george miles books? i’ve always pictured you like mulling over your texts and experimenting and finding new things out yourself but i’m curious if you had a friend/someone you sent drafts to or whatever. is there an ordinary object that has a significance for you that no one else would get or be able to guess? mine’s scissors, my mom used to put a pair under my pillow when i had nightmares, so i’ve always thought of them as a charm or a talisman. people look at me weird sometimes when i say i find them comforting. do have any birthday plans, ik yours is coming up really soon! also do you like being born this time of year? i feel like it’s kind of fun that the year starts when you do. was there anything you found out about kathy that really surprised you? like that you didn’t really picture her doing/being like/etc. and one more, this one’s sort of personal so you can skip it if you want (the others too obviously) but have you ever like… fallen for someone you find sort of hard to be around? i’m seeing a guy called alex who’s really sweet and has had a rough life and into a lot of drugs et cetera. none of that bothers or scares me but he’s very sensitive and takes things to heart and i feel like i need to be very delicate with him? but i’m very out my depth with his experiences and so worried about hurting him i end up just avoiding him. i feel awful about it. is that like… slightly normal or am i being a cunt lol. ok that’s it from me, hope you and everyone else’s evening’s going smoothly! (oh ps can anyone tell me how to add a profile picture? i don’t want to be gray anymore)
oh sorry actually, could i give a little update? hyper-annotation got a sick new cover! https://anticlaires.tumblr.com/post/705530703770730496/updates the magazine’s slated to come out in february but i think december 15th’s the deadline, so please submit if anyone’s interested. dm @KenjiSiratori on twitter! i’ve been talking to the artist too, he introduced me to syzygy/orphan drift. he seems like a super sweet cool talented guy, @akuavisuals on instagram if anyone’s interested! the work’s amazing 🤍
wait, sorry testing to see if my reply posted.
thanks so much for boosting my thing also!! i’m still working on the gory code story but i’m getting looser with it? i started thinking abt it as basically a hex so i’m incorporating a snippet from one of my novels as a sacrificial animal or smth. like i’m infecting it with this… script-disease i guess that’s like mutilating it and reorganizing it into a different kind of creature, a bit about leslie scalapino’s gazelle-dihedrals? but in a word virus/cybergrind way. i still have to do all the actual code stuff, i’m holding off bc it’s a slog to learn about, but i love the idea that a more logical/exact form of torture would build itself out of the mutations/glitches/accidents/whatever. there’s an old mike landy drawing called h2ny self-destructing suicide machine? i saw as a teenager got obsessed with the idea of smth that builds itself out of taking itself apart, like an anti-machine. so i’m writing a second story (the “spell” ig) on top (inside?) of the first with this fragmenting symbolic language i “grew” when i was semi-psychotic, using emojis and typefaces and stuff as the proxy.
(ditto)
^
…. ok one more test i’m really sorry
doing some aleatory/scrying junk for it too with the garbled stuff that comes out of a coptic translator/google! my favorite so far came from scrambling up the letters in the official name for unit 731 and turning it into japanese and then to english. it came out as “listen to that incompleteness”—how devastating/poetic/appropriate is that?
here’s a link ☺️ https://tinyurl.com/5n846wsf also could you say anything about the stories you’re working on? super curious and excited!