Welcome to Liberty City

Addendum to this because how the hell could I have forgotten there's a genre actually called vaporwave!

The memory/The virtual

Reality - the actual

Occupational America

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles the report, said leisure and hospitality added 75,000 jobs in June. Monthly job growth in this industry has averaged 55,000 in 2013, almost twice the average gain of 30,000 per month in 2012. Employment in professional and business services rose by 53,000 in June.
Employment in most other major industries, including mining and logging, construction, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing, showed little change in June. The government continued to cut jobs during the month, shedding another 5,000 positions to make up a total of 65,000 in the last 12 months.
The number of long-term unemployed (those left jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 4.3m, accounting for 36.7% of the unemployed. Unemployment rates for teenagers (24%), black people (13.7%), and Hispanics (9.1%) remained stubbornly high."

phantom images of work

phantom culture

phantom history

conspicuous consumption

All That is Solid Melts Into Air

Black Smoke and Spliff Dubs

The Grim Reefer

and all of their friends, Belzebong, Stoned Jesus, Weedeater, Cannabis Corpse, and Dogshit Orgasm.


Flying High in Unfriendly Skies

Slight Return: Night Fell on a Different Waterworld

This emphasis on scarcity and barrenness was a misjudged throwback to the austerity of the mid-twentieth century. And with hindsight, WW seems to have more in common with the dystopias of post-war sci-fi than with the hypertrophied CGI monsters of the post-LotR era. Yet even a post-war work like Ballard’s Drowned World (an obvious analogue) had the prescience to see that the future lay in foregrounding themes of over-abundance. In Ballard’s book, plant and animal life has reclaimed the earth, and the artefacts of capitalism are abundantly collectable. Danger lies in the primitive pull exerted by the jungle of objects – both the man-made relics and the wild intrusions of the organic world.

"Bravo’s Gallery Girls’ Angela Pham as Sea Punk holding ‘Batteries Frozen in Powerade’ (2012) in ritualistic pose (2012) while standing in water in the Lower East Side after Hurricane Sandy (Part 2), 2013"

Frozen Out