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Biography
Jon Rafman (born 1981) is an artist, filmmaker, and essayist. His work centers around the emotional, social and existential impact of technology on contemporary life. His artwork has gained international attention and was exhibited in 2015 at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. He is widely known for exhibiting found images from Google Street View in his online artwork 9-Eyes (2009-ongoing).
In September 2013, Rafman collaborated with Brooklyn-based experimental musician Oneohtrix Point Never, formally known as Daniel Lopatin, on a music video for Still Life to accompany the release of R Plus Seven on Warp Records. The two later collaborated to create a two-part music video for Sticky Drama, from Lopatin's 2015 album Garden of Delete.
In September 2013, Rafman collaborated with Brooklyn-based experimental musician Oneohtrix Point Never, formally known as Daniel Lopatin, on a music video for Still Life to accompany the release of R Plus Seven on Warp Records. The two later collaborated to create a two-part music video for Sticky Drama, from Lopatin's 2015 album Garden of Delete.
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Their works
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Woods of Arcady
Director
event 2009 star_border 6
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""The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy;" – with this line begins Rafman's Woods of Arcady. The work juxtaposes a computer generated recitation of Yeat's poem The Song of the Happy Shepherd, along side video of scenes captured from the artist's explorations of the virtual environment of Second Life. The simultaneously fantastic and vapid virtual landscapes documented by the artist are at home with Yeat's imagery "Where are now the warring kings? An idle word is now their glory."
Le Guignon
Director
event 2011 star_border 6
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Jon Rafman's short features computer-generated renders of the Twin Towers and a narration from Charles Baudelaire's "Le Guignon."
Open Heart Warrior
Director
event 2016 star_border 7
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Center of a three-channel video. Narration over computer-generated landscapes and figures.
Counterfeit Poast
Director
event 2022 star_border 5.5
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Composed of a sequence of character-study vignettes, Counterfeit Poast explores the interrelation of crafted online identities and memories with intimate personal identities and memories, and how it is that one constitutes and distorts the other.
Minor Daemon, Vol. 1
Director
event 2021 star_border 8
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Minor Daemon, Vol. 1 is set in a surreal dystopia that feels like the deranged fever-dream of Hieronymus Bosch if he grew up on 4chan. It traces the intersecting fortunes of two young men, Billy and Minor Daemon, who share an extraordinary gift for virtual reality gaming and go through a series of nightmarish events.
You, the World and I
Director
event 2010 star_border 7
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Rather than the charms of the lyre, contemporary technological tools, Google Street View and Google Earth, beckon as the pathway for our narrator to regain memories and recapture traces of his lost love. In the film, they are as captivating and enthralling as charming as any lyre in retrieving the other: at first they might seem an open retort to critics of new technology who bemoan the lack of the tangible presence of the other in our interactions on the Internet.
Annals of Time Lost
Director
event 2013
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Annals of Time Lost works towards illuminating the individual’s relationship to the archive and the desire for physical presence. The exhibition is archiving a condition that may not exist decades from now. It is itself a record of the anxiety and unease around where, how and what is the physical self when one is in a social relation in cyberspace. Rafman’s work asks us to implicate ourselves in this process as both the creator and the subject, the archivist and the archived.
Codes of Honor
Director
event 2012 star_border 8
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In a journey that mixes cinematic genres, a legendary arcade video gamer moves seamlessly through actual and virtual space and time. While he cherishes the intense experiences of mastering a renowned video game, or defeating an archrival, he comes to question the significance of his legacy and the tradition itself.
Punctured Sky
Director
event 2021
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An unseen narrator reunites with his old friend Joey Bernstein in the dingy back room of a comic and games store located in a dead mall. Bernstein asks if the narrator remembers their favorite childhood computer game, Punctured Sky, and informs him that all trace of the game has vanished from history. The narrator then embarks on a quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of Punctured Sky. Along the way, he must contend with a series of strange encounters on and offline and confront the precariousness of memory in the digital age.
Sticky Drama
Director
event 2015
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Featuring a cast of over 35 children, with Oneohtrix Point Never’s soundtrack, Sticky Drama portrays the development of a role-playing game set in a fantastical and violent world in which its participants struggle to preserve their memory and past histories.
Still Life (Betamale)
Director
event 2013 star_border 8.5
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‘Still Life (Betamale)’ draws images from a range of online fetish sites, engaging with the theme of obsessive desire. The narrated version of the album track is immersed in the simultaneously captivating and disturbing world of internet subcultures.
Mainsqueeze
Director
event 2015 star_border 5.3
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A compelling mix of attraction and repulsion, Mainsqueeze is entirely composed of footage found online, surfing the deep web.
News from the Madhatter
Director
event 2005
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Tales of a street historian.
Day of Reckoning
Director
event 2001
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A teenage boy's epic struggle against an evil necromancer.
lost tapes: the adventures of my keys
Director
event 2002
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Episode 1: The City of Lost Objects. Short by Jon Rafman.
Jon Rafman Conversation with Nicholas O’Brien, Kool-Aid Man in Second Life
Director
event 2009
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Kool-Aid Man in Second Life- Jon Rafman interview with Nicholas O'Brien (2009)
Nine Eyes of Google Street View: Slideshow
Director
event 2020
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Nine Eyes of Google Street View: Slideshow (2020) by Jon Rafman
In the Realms of Gold
Director
event 2012
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In the Realms of Gold (2012) by Jon Rafman - Music by Oneohtrix Point Never Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Landscapes for Neon Parallel - Game Ambience
Director
event 2015
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Landscapes for Neon Parallel - Game Ambience (2015) by Jon Rafman
Neptune’s Empire: Second Life ambience
Director
event 2011
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Neptune's Empire: Second Life ambience (2011) by Jon Rafman Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse: And even the like precurse of fierce events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen.-- But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
Imago (an incomplete work)
Director
event 2010
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Imago (an incomplete work) (2010) by Jon Rafman
Oh, the humanity!
Director
event 2015
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Oh, the humanity! (2015) by Jon Rafman
Erysichthon
Director
event 2015
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Erysichthon is the final element in a trilogy of videos including Still Life (Betamale) and Mainsqueeze. Like the other videos of the series, it comprises found images from the web, user-created contents and video clips. These examples of subcultures are investigated through the theme of devouring and ingesting, used as a metaphor for our culture of consumption and our relationship to the virtual world.
Neon Parallel 1996
Director
event 2015 star_border 7
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Part live-action footage, video game sequences, simulated chat, poetic voiceover and virtual landscape, Neon Parallel 1996 is in Rafman’s own words an attempt at creating a “lost vaporwave classic.”
Dream Journal 2016–2019
Writer
event 2019
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This single-channel video explores the effects of technology and information overload on the contemporary psyche. Set in a virtual tech-noir urban space populated by strange hybrids of non-humans and augmented people, part of the expansive, fractured narrative focuses on the continued adventures of Xanax Girl and her search for her companion—a hybrid dog/seal with the head of a boy—who has been abducted. The film, which arose from the artist’s daily practice of animating his dreams using hobbyist 3D software, weaves together deep-web imagery with hardboiled detective story tropes and repressed libidinal fantasies to create a nightmarish vision of an internet addict’s unconscious. The film features an original score by Oneohtrix Point Never and James Ferraro.
Legendary Reality
Director
event 2018
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Legendary Reality is a science-fiction essay film that portrays the recollections of a solitary narrator imprisoned in his own mind. Using a non-linear structure that weaves together dreams and memory, Jon Rafman creates a stream-of-consciousness meditation on art, identity and time that draw on the work of Leonard Cohen. The film intercuts digitally processed found photos and 3D landscapes sourced from video games to tell the enigmatic voyage of one man's soul.
A Man Digging
Director
event 2013 star_border 8
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A journey through virtual death.
Poor Magic
Director
event 2017 star_border 8
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"Poor Magic effects a beautiful yet terrifying rendition of contemporary consciousness, gesturing towards civilisation's listless drift beyond the corporeal, and technology's infinite desire to penetrate and artificially replicate human essence. Computer-generated crowd simulations run berserk in dreamlike repetition, while a 3D endoscopic journey takes us through the body's most intimate passages."
Dream Journal, May 2016-February 2017
Director
event 2017 star_border 8
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Experimental narrative animation using hobbyist 3D animation and inspired by niche genres of computer-generated erotica.
Tokyo Color Drifter
Director
event 2009 star_border 6
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Short film by Jon Rafman.
City Girls
Director
event 2004
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Tortured by a vague memory, a man interviews three women to see if he met them in the past.
King of the Rain-Country
Director
event 2012
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A king reflects about death.
Kool-Aid Man in Second Life
Director
event 2009 star_border 8
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Kool-Aid Man travels through a variety of worlds from the video game Second Life.
SHADOWBANNED
Director
event 2018
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SHADOWBANNED (2018) uses the aesthetics of internet conspiracy theories to tell the story of an anonymous narrator on an enigmatic, transdimensional journey. The film unfolds across multiple universes wherein dreams are recycled waste products and meaning has been all but lost. The narrator arms himself with artificial memories of artificial pasts in order to protect himself from the future. SHADOWBANNED is a meditation on the perception of history, esoteric culture and the implosion of meaning in our hyper-accelerated times.
Disasters Under the Sun
Director
event 2019 star_border 8
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The film portrays a post-human dystopia featuring faceless 3-D avatars continuously tortured in abstract digital space, a terrifying image of a future where all humanity is uploaded to a virtual purgatory and endlessly abused.
Remember Carthage
Director
event 2013 star_border 7
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An essay film in the tradition of experimental documentarians like Chris Marker or Harun Farocki, Remember Carthage takes the viewer on an epic journey in search of an abandoned resort town deep in the Sahara desert. However, one travels not through archival or personal images but through footage sourced from PS3 video games and Second Life, depicting ancient civilizations that seem at once familiar and totally fantastical.
DU3L
Director
event 2009 star_border 5
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Two samurais fight on a beach.
Deities & Demigods
Director
event 2011
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Dissonance of the digital and physical archive.
Ad-vice for a Prophet
Director
event 2005
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An anonymous narrator, alone in his apartment, cannot tell if his inner life is composed of memories of dreams or memories of reality. Using a mixture of super-8 Kodachrome and nostalgic 1980's advertisements, the film captures the way pop culture ephemera are repetitively imposed on us until we feel they are our creation.
ᖴᗩᑕIᗩᒪᔕ I
Director
event 2022
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In ᖴᗩᑕIᗩᒪᔕ I, Jon Rafman alters a selection of these unwrapped head textures and animates the transformation in the style of VFX breakdown reels, typically used to showcase the special effects in movies and games.
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