Jon Rafman

Jon Rafman’s (born in Montreal in 1981) artistic practice illuminates the many intersections between physical and digital life. In his multifaceted media works, the Canadian artist examines how modern technologies and digital media affect contemporary consciousness. He studies online worlds and analyzes their vocabulary, which he carries over into his own video animations. In his works, he takes this language as his starting point, developing poetic narratives and dystopian environments that reflect critically on the ambivalent potential of the Internet and its influence on the present day.

Video, 7:53 min

Jon Rafman creates computer-generated dystopian worlds in which horror has become commonplace. In Disasters Under The Sun, people are reduced to emotionless moving masses, controlled by an external force and subject entirely to its whims. The faceless 3D animations undergo constant torment. Robbed of all individuality and power to take action, the individual members of society appear to be prisoners of a postindustrial, dematerialized world. Rafman highlights the alienation that separates people through both digital and technological means, unraveling any sense of community. Unlike the utopian visions of the future that characterized 20th century modernity, Rafman crafts post-human scenarios in which humans have been reduced to digital avatars, thereby pointing to the harmful effects on the body and mind of living in a world ruled by algorithms.