It is truly the catastrophe of meaning that lies in wait for us – JEAN BAUDRILLARD

In a world where our virtual life has consumed our physical state of being, the lines between IRL and URL dissolve through mechanical routine and limitless manipulation.  Modulators and controllers of an overwhelming panoply of sights, sounds, information, and events, we function in communication networks as both alienated subject and mediated object.  Virtually extended, we are trapped in a circular loop of presented and re-presented information and images–– a simulated reality where representations of history, society, adolescence, youth, and ourselves are commonly perceived as lived experience.

Instruments and vessels of absorption, the evolution of becoming an adult has changed with the expansion of open-source information and the elaboration of pop culture.  We inhabit an age where information and value, notions of private and public, as well as distinctions between the natural and the neutralized, collapse into meaningless noise.  Like the World Wide Web itself, the Post-Internet visual and sound artists showcased here deconstruct the past by reassembling fragments into new strange hybrid forms and futures.

Screen Flicker | Faith Holland

The beauty of this new habitat is juxtaposed in a political climate with recurring themes of corruption, immorality, violence and invasion of even the most basic of personal privacies.  Deeply entrenched in a lifestyle of habitual routine and manufactured need–– where we are constantly having new necessities forced upon us through rendering the technological items our culture has forced us into addiction to–– looking back less than twenty years ago seems like an eternity of waste.  Overloaded and overwhelmed, the only hope is to try to forget.

Try To Forget: A Group Show

AUDIO |DIGITAL | VIDEO | INSTALLATIONS + PERFORMANCES

CURATED BY JAY GAMBIT (Crowhurst)

CO-PRESENTED WITH WOAH

OPENING RECEPTION: 8PM–11PM SATURDAY, MARCH 8TH

AT THE RAT FACTORY

1443 N. Highland Ave, Hollywood CA 90028 (Map)

– Facebook event –

>DIGITAL: Natalie Hands | Anthony Antonellis | Dave Hudson | Ian Aleksander Adams | Hush B Quiet | Terrell Davis | Bebe Bones | Jim Anderson | Spencer Keller >VIDEO: Molly Ryan | H. Martis | Estrid Lutz | Logan Owlbeemoth | Faith Holland >WALL: Trevor Brolin | Lydia Jones | Nora Quinn/Sammy Wong | Eron Rauch | Trevor Treglia | Jen Miller | Gabe Martinez | Jimmy Swill | XE Davis >PERFORMANCE: Crowhurst | Bastard Noise + Witches of Malibu | Hive Mind | Circuit Rider | Endometrium >INSTALLATION: James Marshall | Jay Gambit