Utopia Without You

This digital file was part of the exhibition, Utopia Without You at Williamson | Knight in Portland, Oregon, Sept 6th - Oct 13th 2018

Utopia Without You is an elegy for American liberalism using the novel and nested forms of insulation that have helped make its death so palatable. Fashioned as a kind of gamer den of the apocalypse it ruminates on trans-pessimism and isolation as a Pyrrhic survival technique. Nestled within the velvet trap of the den there is freedom from visibility: both the threat of violence, and the horrors of being consumed like so many ill-digested ally cookies. Conversely, the Skinner box of the digital attenuates one to some combination of viciousness and vapidity. This is the bind, finding human connection in a way that acknowledges and transcends the pain of the real while evading the hunter's snares.

Original score by Rook: https://rooksfeather.bandcamp.com/