Join Caesura magazine as we shine a spotlight on Jon Rafman’s most controversial artwork. Dream Journal 2016-2019 is a feature-length film about the chaos, agony, and excitement of the internet age. Through a series of dream episodes, an archetypical millennial embarks on an epic journey, encountering absurd dystopian characters and surreal landscapes. Jon Rafman’s fantastical CGI universe comprises video game aesthetics, dark-web anxiety, sub- and pop-cultural memes, ancient mythologies, and obscure art history references. Vaporwave pioneers Daniel Lopatin and James Ferraro composed the soundtrack of this Dantean journey into contemporary hell. Recently featured in the 2019 Venice Biennale, Rafman’s nightmarish work is a tale of the mass deception accompanying the loss of historical meaning in the present.
Caesura will present screenings of Jon Rafman’s Dream Journal 2016-2019 along with a critical discussion of the work. The video will be streamed four times between Friday, October 30th and Sunday, November 1st. A live roundtable will take place on Sunday, November 1st at 1:00 PM EST to reflect on Dream Journal and its significance for art in the 21st century. This unique partnership and exhibition event reflects a mutual commitment—between artist and journal—to a critical investigation of the possibilities of art today.
As the first event in Caesura’s “Art of Conversation” series, where participants discuss a single artwork together, the roundtable will strive to foster a critical exchange focused on Dream Journal as an object of aesthetic experience.
JON RAFMAN’S DREAM JOURNAL — ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPANTS:
Vanessa Place, poet and criminal defense attorney
Victoria Campbell, artist, theorist and critic based in New York
Athina Karatzogianni, Professor in Media and Communication (University of Leicester, UK)
Andrew Fremont-Smith, writer and artist working in performance and theory
Bret Schneider, artist, musician, critic and Caesura co-founder
Marco Aurelio Torres, Chicago-based historian of 20th century art and politics
Grant Tyler, musician and Caesura editor
Moderated by Laurie Rojas, independent art critic based in Berlin and Caesura co-founder
ABOUT CAESURA:
Caesura is a forum where artists, writers, and critics can experiment with their work beyond the taboos and schemas of the art world. We connect cultural production in the present with the history of art in the past in order to clear the confusion that contemporary art discourse has sown.
For more information contact: editor@caesuramag.org
Download: Press Release for Jon Rafman’s Dream Journal, presented by Caesura