Jon Rafman Video Premiere And "The Nine Eyes of Google Street View" Signing @ Family Books In Los Angeles
photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Nine days from the release of the new widely-anticipated Oneohtrix Point Never album Garden of Delete, a new single “Sticky Drama” and accompanying film by Jon Rafman and Daniel Lopatin has been released today. The short film /music video is released in two parts. “Sticky Drama” is arguably the irregular-beating-heart and lyrical inspiration of Garden of Delete. It ensnares Lopatin’s hyper-attuned pop tendencies, as well as his reckless sonic trips into the void, and emerges as beautiful vertigo; a thorny, encompassing, truly groundbreaking classic. With a cast of over 35 children, the film tunes into this musical ambition, bringing 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. Inspired by the costumes, staging and extended improvised narratives of Live Action Role Play (LARP), the video reflects the vivid, often violent world of children’s imaginations and games, as well as extending both artists’ ongoing investigation into appropriation, the nature of memory and the horror of data loss. The piece was originally commissioned by the Zabludowicz Collection in conjunction with Warp Records. An alternative edit of it has been showing as part of Rafman’s multi-format exhibition currently showing in London.
For his first major solo exhibition in the UK, Canadian artist Jon Rafman has transformed the spaces of the Zabludowicz Collection into a playful series of new installations that immerse visitors within his video and sculptural works. Emerging from his interest in the relationship between technology and human consciousness, Rafman’s works examine ideas of desire – its simulation and enactment. The exhibition will be on view at the Zabludowicz Collection until December 20, 2015. photographs by Thierry Bal