D. Prospectus

“I think that only time tells about painting. No artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because I think it takes at least seventy-five to a hundred years before the thing begins to sort itself out from the theories that have been formed about it. And I think that most people enter a painting by the theory that has been formed about it and not by what it is. Fashion suggests that you should be moved by certain things and should not by others. This is the reason that even successful artists—and especially successful artists, you may say - have no idea whatever whether their work’s any good or not, and will never know.”
- Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester, p. 69

[The 4D Road cinema studies resume; back shift to literature; drift into New Media, and so on.] Monday started with Stranger Than Paradise, which is now one of my top ten favorite motion pictures, joining another Jarmusch film, Dead Man. on the list. Both are Drift stories. The former opened the floodgates to a lifetime of memories of criss-crossing the continent by plane, train and automobile (RIP, John Candy). The poignancy of Stranger Than Paradise, Dead Man, and I can throw in Down by Law here, arises from twists on American fables, parables and tropes: rags to riches; low lives and mean streets; the immigrant experience; luck and industry; the interplay of savages and schemers with the Man on their heels; beauty, innocence and the hovering malice of exploitation; the convergence of worlds old and new. These themes and threads in turn tap into ancient legends, myths and archetypes. Which I traced on through Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and Goddard’s Contempt, the Odyssey, and round and round we go, going, gone: (back io the future?) to 2001: A Space Odyssey! Does anyone else recognize a relativity to Rafik Anadol’s splashy projections in the eye-popping closing sequences of 2001, which, by the way, is inarguably a great Drift film, and also speaks directly to public AI discourse, Singularity fears, etc.? …in Permanent Vacation, the Drift is explicit. More Drift filmography: Slackers, The Road, Road to Perdition, Bottle Rocket, Easy Rider, Powwow Highway, the Hobbit, Wild at Heart, Being There, Wings of Desire, Road Warrior, Forrest Gump…on and on.

Adjacent to this rich kinetic media content seam is Drift literature’s dynamic 2D inter-cultural mother lode. Wide as the world, old as mankind, and going strong today, with no sign of abating: e.g., Gilgamesh, Beowulf, the Monkey King, Bhagavad Gita, Exodus, the Divine Comedy, the Canterbury Tales, Candide; and frankly, this is just a shortlist off the top of my head, derived from a fundamental or universalist criteria. Can an argument be put forth for a Unified Road/Drift Theory of language? An excellent topic for a seminar, say I, wistfully, given that such a liberal-minded chimera of a course is as likely in 2026 academia as one focused on great labor victories of all time being cheerfully offered at the Wharton School! Whilst a speculative curriculum operates like a thought experiment in our depleted and fractured, increasingly privatized national educational schema, one may yet be able to cobble together or “curate” a plausible, sound, personal set of texts by which one is inspired, inflamed, informed, or charmed — the equivalent in platformed vernacular to top# playlists, favorites and bookmark chains. Which multi-serve as ad bait, community circle identifiers, profile enhancers and so on. The medium thrives on preference as commodity. Not too long ago, accumulating an impressive literary reference catalog was a signifier of cultivation, intelligence, curiosity, open-mindedness; attributes associated with hallowed Enlightenment ideals. Silicon Valley’s civilization-scale techno-blitzkrieg project is diametrically opposed to the prior models for mass acculturation, particularly democratic ones (see Dewey). The evidence is literally in our faces, at our fingertips, in the APPS! Our attention spans are plummeting. Folks are losing their ability to solve problems. Mental illness is ubiquitous. We are not reacting correctly to barbarity, abnormality, cruelty. Much of this maladjustment is directly attributable to the proliferation of wired/networked electronic devices. Which are more and more dependent on machine-learning. Panic is appropriate, sister!

I’ll confide in the reader a few selected works in the Road-lit genre that moved me deeply when I first read them: Kerouac’s On the Road, Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. They meshed inextricably with my identity, defining significantly my peculiar American perspective: Beat-inflected, contemporary indigenous, Gonzo. Don’t forget, I came of age in the Post-War era, the 60s and 70s, in West-by-God Virginia, a period that is egregiously under-examined and misunderstood by the “coastal elites,” who were therefore almost entirely unprepared and dismissive of the Reagan-led reactionary shift that laid the groundwork Bush I and II, the neocons and Trump, on the one hand, and neoliberal Clinton and Obama, on the other. From dopey Ronnie through OWS and my beloved Bernie, my view of politics, the economy and society resembles the unspeakable, inexcusable horrors of Battle of the Somme, that wasteland, if it were live-streamed at a beyond-luxe soiree for the glitterati internationalists, the Davos crowd, a mix of old and new millionaires, billionaires and the odd trillionaire, their servants, management, carnal playthings, trainers, dietitians, PAs, security, pets, and celebrity entertainers, chillin’ above the Cloud in a SpaceX-branded sky palace. Soundtrack is Krakatoa, by B-52s.

PLATES

Transmediale Sketches 6-18