How does technology and the information dump impact the contemporary psyche?

Jon Rafman created animations of his own dreams every day using a 3D software, which became the starting point of his video installation Dream Journal 2016–2019.

The two young female protagonists of the video are archetypical millennial, the other a kid-warrior. They embark on a Danteesque journey through absurd, dystopian landscapes. The fragmented plot combines deep-web imagery with classical epic tropes and repressed libidinal fantasies, out of which unfolds the nightmarish vision of an Internet addict’s subconscious.

The unique atmosphere of the video is created by the soundtrack composed by experimental electronic musicians Oneohtrix Point Never and James Ferraro as well as by the other elements of space: the soft carpet covering the floor and the anthropomorphised, sculpturesque seats
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Jon Rafman uses elements of various online worlds to create poetic stories that take a critical stance to the present and examine the effects the latest technologies have on the contemporary imagination. In his Dream Journal 2016-2019, he created a video game-like montage that reveals the darkest recesses of the collective unconscious somewhere between the grotesque world of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings and the virtual reality of the online game Second Life.

Borbála Szalai