unibrow'd warrior of netspace
unibrow'd warrior of netspace
The top comment under deathdotgov’s viral TikTok clip reads, “This intro would be so cool for a band that was actually good.”
The commenter – who received over a thousand likes – is referring to the band’s sample of a classic online meme, the “So yeah, you’re gay,” clip of an angry gamer’s message that concludes with an infamously terrible guitar solo. On stage, deathdotgov pause while the poorly-recorded sound bite plays. At the moment the speaker would normally begin his solo, a tenor saxophone screeches out, and the band bursts into bombastic improvisation.
The top comment may be right – the next ten seconds are loud, discordant, ugly; the camera whirls around erratically to capture the near-dozen people on stage each thrashing their instruments about. But beyond subjective standards of good or bad, the clip is clearly engaging, if the 50,000+ likes mean anything.
“We choose them during rehearsal,” deathdotgov’s guitarist Dylan said about the band’s eclectic and humorous sampling in a Zoom interview. “At our first show we didn’t have a lot of our bits worked out … we booked the show before we even had Coba really as a singer, and we decided to play a Weezer song in between the breakdown for the last song.”
The show captured in that TikTok was deathdotgov’s third, and is available in full on YouTube as a live album. Two songs from the video have now been released as singles, (as well as a third, The Observer, which wasn’t played at that show): explosive, riffy opener “Magic Guns”; and “Tweak”, which owes its name to the South Park character and begins with a sample of him screaming, “They’ve got nuclear missiles! We’re all gonna die!”
The sample, combined with vague lyrical allusions to DNA and a “reinvented man”, paints a sardonic, ominous picture of a radioactive future.
“We want it to actually be fun,” said Dylan about the sample’s inclusion. “They’re more of a live accessory… we actually took the Tweak sample out, and it wasn’t in the recording, and then right when we sent it to master we put it back in.”
Translating the songs from a live context to the studio was not a direct process, said drummer Meghan. “Our main songwriters in the band are Dylan and John, their process is writing something up and showing it to us … we try to write the most bananas, stupid crazy parts we can. The songs that we write end up translating live well first, and then we record it and it takes on a whole different life. For Magic Guns there’s a lot of extra auxiliary percussion that we can’t exactly do live.”
Though releasing the singles to platforms like Spotify signifies a step forward for the band, they assert that streaming is not a core priority.
“Streams are just clout… it’s nice to be able to see the number go up, but I would rather have 500 people show up to our show than have a song with a million streams and no one’s coming to see us live,” said Dylan. Their live recordings are also available on Bandcamp, which presents listeners with more options to support them directly.
“We do really love Bandcamp, and people actually do buy our stuff off of it… We record all our shows and Dylan will go through all the takes of our live shows, and decide to put things online. We think it’s a really cool, organic tool to use,” said Meghan.
Aside from meager streaming payouts, Spotify also provides challenges towards finding exposure with its inconsistent and occasionally stringent genre labels.
“The thing for us is that when we are going on Spotify and have to pitch a song on a playlist – most bands rely on playlisting now – and we have to name what our genre is, we’re like, ‘We’re not post-punk, but I guess we’re like post-hardcore, but, with sax, and we’re not really hardcore but let’s put that there too.’ The way that you can take in music and find it now is so different,” explained Meghan.
The upcoming record is still in the works, with a projected release date of early 2025.
“We recorded everything live in the same room, and the sax separately, and now we’re trying to get the money together to mix the album fully,” Dylan noted.
Deathdotgov’s first three singles can be streamed here. Their live recordings are available on YouTube and Bandcamp.
this is the way it is: A MotoGP Zine. six pages, 8 x 11, mixed media.
Andrew Chalfen’s The Structure of Smoke is both an interpretation and subversion of patterns and repetition, the central theme of iteration reiteration. The intricate ink transfers create a complex array, but never repeat, while the painted wooden structure disrupts the rhythm of the piece by bursting out into three dimensions. The geometric shapes suggest algorithms or architecture, but their colors dazzle. When explaining the delicate balance of pattern and chaos in the piece, Chalfen says, “I rely on a mix of intentionality combined with a certain amount of randomization.”
Ash Newton: What is your intent in creating this artwork?
Andrew Chalfen: Several answers, I suppose: I make art because that is what I do. Indeed, I feel compelled to do it and get antsy when I don't (same goes for creating music). I'm also following paths to see where my various aesthetic interests lead. "The Structure of Smoke" is the latest iteration of my exploration of certain forms (painted sticks, drawings used as ink transfers) and ways of using those forms in various arrangements/compositions. This path-following is a primary driver in what I do, asking the question "What if I do this?' and seeing how the work responds to that. I want to make work that coheres, makes aesthetic sense, is pleasing to the viewer. My pieces seem to suggest things, such as architecture, data, play, urban densities, etc without actually being those things. It not only involves a lot of puzzle solving and hopefully a few a-ha moments, but also a trust in the processes I've gradually developed over the years. I rely on a mix of intentionality combined with a certain amount of randomization. I make each stick and drawing not knowing exactly in what position it'll wind up in a work, or even in which work it'll end up. Thus, once I settle on a compositional strategy, I know generally in advance how a piece will turn out, but not specifically.
AN: I really like the way your work handled the exhibition's theme. Was the backing pattern predetermined?
AC: The general overall look of the backing pattern is something I have in mind in advance. However, there's a lot of randomization and chance involved at various points. The background is composed of many individual ink drawings, which tend to come into being in a pseudo-fractal manner as I make them. For the ink transfers, I used to use the original drawings, destroying them in the process, which after a while kind of bummed me out. Here I've spent all this work on a drawing only to have it used once and get destroyed. So I started scanning my drawings and printing them out and using the printouts to make the ink transfers. So I've got a growing library of scans of drawings I can pull from to create these complex assemblages. Plus the images are reversed due to the transfer process, adding another layer of unpredictability. The black and white of the drawings is a nice contrast to the colorful sticks. It's my current iteration for a background. In the past I've used solid gold fields, dark purple fields, various pale cloudscapes, just trying out different ideas.
AN: How was the wood structure constructed?
AC: I've developed a kind of factory line for stick creation. I take square dowels of various thicknesses, prime them, saw them into a variety of lengths, paint them on all sides, using painter's tape to get as clean a line as I can get, then varnish them. I want each stick to make aesthetic sense on its own, almost as a stand-alone piece of art. I figure if they look good individually, they'll look good massed. This has more or less worked out. I like to have a lot of painted sticks on hand when I begin to assemble a structure so I can hone in on what sticks go with what's already been constructed in terms of look and size. More puzzles to solve. After the background is completed and varnished, only then do I start gluing sticks to the panel and to each other. Once I've glued a stick down, I've committed. There's no undo. I have to be able to live with all my previous decisions. I kind of like that limitation (I kind of like having a lot of limitations. There are plenty of decisions to be made without the possibility of infinite options.) After I add each stick, I take a look at the overall composition to see where I feel the next stick needs to go and what color and shape it should be. At some point adding an additional piece feels like it would detract from the composition. That's how I know I'm done.
AN: Does putting art up for sale change its function?
AC: I don't think so. I suppose this gets into what the purpose of art is in society and for the individual. Plus artists have to eat. I guess I could just give away my art and music, but I feel an artist should be compensated for the work they do, just like anyone else.
AN: Do you care what the owner does with it?
AC: Hopefully they'll hang it on their wall and appreciate it! A lot of my pieces have no "up" - they can be hung in any 90 degree orientation. In fact, I wire a lot of my work with two wires so that the possessor of a piece can occasionally change up their viewing perspective. For me, I want people to enjoy my work, have things about it revealed slowly over time by observation. I'd rather have my art be in people's homes or, knock wood, a museum or two, than to have my home fill up with my works until I move along to the next astral plane. Maybe it's the performer in me, but I want others to enjoy/experience my work. Nice for someone to see art with a fresh set of eyes other than mine.
The Structure of Smoke, 2024
i like writing these little captain's logs, peppering them between my more serious reporting. i'm still conflicted about what i want to pursue professionally; i think i work best when i'm covering things like MotoGP and art, but i feel a moral responsibility to focus on the life-changing (or world-ending) stories in the realms of climate reporting and war reporting. trying to write about nice things right now feels like putting up wallpaper in a burning building. i mean, making art is one thing, but reporting on it when you could be telling the most harrowing and necessary stories on the planet is ridiculous! but how do i get there? i can't even go to class without breaking down. i just hate attending an institution that receives money from and gives research to the most massive, violent, cruel weapons manufacturers in our country. and i hate being scared to say it, especially on this site, something i'm using essentially as a portfolio or extension of my resume. but why is it controversial, and why should it jeopardize my potential employment?
since we're officially 1 race into the championship, i thought i'd put together some assorted wwcr thoughts.
the Yamaha YZF-R7s provided to each team are, to my knowledge, all standardized. the bike is a 689cc inline twin that despite its larger displacement hits about the same top speeds as a Moto3 bike, but weighs twice as much. the most interesting aspect of the machine is its use of a crossplane crankshaft, where the crank throws are angled at 90 degrees from each other instead of 180 degrees. wikipedia offers this visualization to explain the tech:
if we were to condense this down from three dimensions to two, then it could be explained like this: there's one crankshaft angled at twelve o'clock, one at three o'clock, one at nine o'clock and one at six o'clock. however, since the bike is a V2, we can ignore those last two throws, since they don't exist in this engine.
this design is based off of the current Yamaha build in MotoGP, and is meant to improve torque at higher RPMs. its horsepower peaks at 72.4 hp around 9,000 RPM, but the maximum torque outputs at 6,500 RPM. that means it accelerates quickest in the middle(ish) area of its RPM range. this means it can run out of a turn pretty well under the right rider.
look, it's no secret that the bikes are slow. i'm not going to argue against that. this is a $9,000 motorcycle for a series with a $25,000 entry fee, while Moto3 boasts a fee more than twice that. it's a cheap series, but it's getting off the ground -- which brings us to our second point of focus:
i was impressed to see the diversity in teams and sponsors. some riders, like Tayla Relph, are essentially financing their ride entirely on their own. her team, TAYCO Motorsports, is named after her own social media and brand strategy company. her day job funds her racing career. other riders, like Mia Rusthen, are self-funded without being bolstered by a secondary income.
on the other end of the spectrum, Pata Prometeon Yamaha is running a WWCR team much like it runs its WSBK team. though they don't have their own custom livery to show off their fancy sponsors (unlike close competitors Forward Racing), they can obviously afford to invest in top talent. their star Beatriz Neila is coming directly from the Copa R7, a Spanish racing series also limited to the Yamaha model. she might be the most experienced with the machine out of anyone on the grid.
there are plenty of teams that are firmly in the middle, budget-wise. Sekhmet Racing team is owned/operated by Maddi Patterson -- yeah, Simon Patterson's wife -- and boasts a wide range of midlevel sponsors and partners, even if they also lack a custom livery to advertise them. Sekhmet for sure has the best social media management and brand strategy of any team, with its own website with articles, rider bios, and a mailing list. they are pursuing legitimacy in every way, and it's obvious by how they present themselves that they do not want to be a small-time team in a small-time series.
we're one race in and i've already started to find my favorites. there were riders i was aware of before WWCR; i think any dedicated racing fan could at least name Maria Herrera and Ana Carrasco, but i'd heard of Beatriz Neila and Sara Sanchez as well. in the run-up to the season's start, i've read lots of interviews with various competitors on Paddock Sorority a site dedicated to covering women in racing.
off the bat i really like Luna Hirano, both for her extensive endurance career and her fantastic quotes:
her love of video games is relatable, but i'm more interested in her mention of an injury impeding her ability to train. this seems fairly common among competitors, with British rider Lissy Whitmore relaying the exact same thing.
i understand that it's completely normalized for riders to participate while injured or recovering. but so many of this women are entering this class -- a potential career high -- with their performance already permanently hampered by injury. it speaks to, for one, just how much work these women have to do to be recognized, and how little of it pays off. to be nearly incapable of running after an injury and continue racing anyway is nothing short of Herculean to me. not to mention Ana's remarkable recovery from her catastrophic back injury a few years ago. and contrast this with other supposedly "entry-level" series. how many Moto3 riders are coming in already debilitated? it doesn't feel fair.
i've been making these comparisons to Moto3 due largely to the similarity in speed. but i also would prefer WWCR to be considered a feeder series on par with Moto3, instead of what it has already been pigeonholed to be: a place where women can be cloistered off, riding inferior machinery with their supposedly inferior skills. the fact of the matter is that so many of these women came up riding at the exact same tracks as current MotoGP stars, but were never offered the same opportunities, and thus never developed at the same caliber. Maria Herrera, one of the top contenders for the championship, came in second in the 2014 CEV Moto3 season, behind Fabio Quartararo. she describes the shift in her career:
all of this is to say: WWCR's existence is not a victory against sexism. still, i celebrate it for platforming female racers. in a fair world, Moto3 and Moto2 teams would be looking at the current WWCR roster for future talent; but we do not live in a fair world. nevertheless i hold out hope that this series casts ripples throughout international classes, and maybe in ten or twenty or fifty years, female riders will be competing against men all the way to the top.
Sometime late in June, I drove south on University Boulevard from Veirs Mill Road and came to a stop across from Elbe’s Beer & Wine, a neighborhood institution that had suddenly shed its skin: a massive, vibrant mural had appeared on its West-facing wall seemingly overnight.
In truth, the mural was the result of two years of work, hours upon hours of unpaid volunteer labor, a community town hall meeting and 1,500 e-mails.
“Our mission is to bring the community together with art,” says Wheaton Arts Parade director Dan Thompson. The organization, named for its yearly parade, is operated in the free time of a few charitable individuals. Thompson himself built many of the parade floats featured each year.
“Sometimes we get high schools or other arts organizations,” he explains, but connecting to the Wheaton community has largely been an uphill battle. “We’re an arts and entertainment district but we don’t have a lot to show for that.”
It’s surprising, then, that the mural was not the idea of Wheaton Arts Parade, but the community. Elbe’s is a local institution, family-operated since 1951. The building’s facade is an artifact of neighborhood history, harkening back to a time before the skyline was dominated with luxury apartments. Thompson explains, “The owner and I often talk about Wheaton. I came in there one day and he asked, ‘how can we get a mural?’ … We looked at his wall and it was perfect. I took a lot of pictures of the site and decided to apply for a grant.”
The Wheaton Arts Parade website describes the selection process: “WAP assembled an advisory committee of businesses, residents, artists, and the property owner. Informed by the ideas generated by the community in public sessions and online, WAP issued a "Call to Artists" that attracted applications from 45 mural artists across Maryland.” The community emphasized a desire to see Wheaton’s history and culture reflected in the mural.
“One was done by a great muralist but it didn’t seem to capture Wheaton,” says Thompson. After the advisory committee selected their finalists and awarded each with a $1,000 grant to draft a design, the community was allowed to share their opinions through the Facebook group Wonderful Wheaton and a survey sent out in the Wheaton Arts Parade newsletter with over 1,500 recipients.
Unfortunately, the application process was slowed by a lack of consensus about the design and commitment to its completion and maintenance. Thompson explains, “we applied for a grant with the Maryland Arts Council, and then the community asked for a revised design… we were denied the grant because we didn’t show the revisions or have a plan for how to maintain it.”
“We waited a year to reapply and put money aside in an escrow for repairs … but when we applied the next year, we were only provided $30,000.”
With a deficit of $10,000, Wheaton Arts Parade called on the community to help fund the project. Through a page on their website, a notification in their newsletter and a post on the Wonderful Wheaton group, the organization was able to raise over $7,000 from local businesses and residents.
Even with a truncated budget, the mural stands as an example of Wheaton’s vibrant community, both in its artistic depiction of the neighborhood’s history, and in the democratic, transparent process of selection and fundraising that led to its completion.
Ashley Jaye Williams’ solo show, Jaye Williams Product Line for Men, is not an art exhibition.
Separated from the rest of Touchstone Gallery is a glittering showroom of objects offered as the brand new, top-of-the-line must-have gadgets often advertised in monthly subscription boxes on podcasts and YouTube channels. The goods on offer present an alternative vision of gender and patriarchy, giving male consumers a glimpse at their own structure of domination from another perspective.
“The Jaye Williams Product Line for Men exists because I wanted to have a different understanding of objectivity aside from my own,” Williams said in an artist talk on July 27. “Because men make more money and are more suited to capitalism … I thought to take a sales approach.”
The products on offer provide men with various new realities. Behind white temporary walls, a glass comb tipped with nails rotates on a pedestal. Inset into the glass is a crab with two extra legs attached. The title, 100 Strokes, suggests a method of personal grooming; 100 strokes corresponding to 100 nails, bringing a visceral sense of pain into the act of brushing one’s hair. When Williams suggests that men should use this product, she turns the insurmountably unrealistic standards of beauty and hygiene imposed upon women back towards the patriarchy.
Behind the pedestal, against a wall, a television plays a jittery collection of TikToks. In assorted clips, women chronicle their weight loss journeys, give beauty hacks, and spend video after video exercising in front of a camera.
“WATCH ME GO FROM A 3XL TO AN XS”, says text overlaid on a clip of a woman, clearly in the “before” stage, trying on her wedding dress. This woman’s video advertises her systematized project of diet and exercise as a challenge of diligence and commitment instead of self-love, turning the way she presents at her wedding into evidence of a personal failing.
“I will love myself… one day,” declares a clip of “affirmations for self-love”. Social media exacerbates unrealistic body standards by creating a space where women are both viewer and participant in the construction of their dysmorphia. Women watch clips of others forcing themselves through hours at the gym or encouraging the viewer to skip meals in order to “feel pretty” and go on to create their own content demonstrating their commitment to restraint.
Williams says she sourced the clips from “a TikTok algorithm that I taught to reward white feminism, like, go girlboss!” The girlboss term applies easily to the ways women hurt themselves and one another in the name of self-improvement. Williams describes the white feminist as someone who “wants to put on the golden handcuffs,” self-subjugating in the name of likes and replies.
The idea of reinforcing one’s own suffering comes from the philosophical concept of the Panopticon, Williams says. In a prison with one central guard tower that can view every cell, prisoners are always unsure of whether they are being watched, and thus begin to self-surveil. “I think of the panopticon a lot … this is the reality of being a woman.”
In the sculpture Panopticon, Williams examines this dynamic. The pillar covered in glued-on eyeballs may be the ever-watchful guard tower; or a prisoner, turning their gaze out towards the system that keeps them imprisoned. “Most people who are not men – or men too – can relate to this feeling that someone is watching you,” they said.
While the exhibition’s relatability to men is perhaps facetious (“We all only have two options, and the JWPLFM caters to this universal truth,” Williams says in their artist statement), the show presents a deep understanding of how patriarchy penetrates into all our subconscious and how people – men and women alike – can stand to profit from reinforcing patriarchy; including Williams, the smiling salesperson turning systemic oppression into material goods.
Jaye Williams Product Line for Men is no longer on view. Williams’ artist statement and Youtube links to her video works are available here. More information and news about upcoming exhibitions are available on her website or Instagram @ashleyjayewilliams.
Hair Fish, 2024
All The Visible Stars And The Majesty Of The Mountains
we used to live in brief sharp shots of fear, summer flash-floods that howled like oncoming trains and ravaged power lines; now all the trees have come down, there is nothing left to hold up the sky
now, terror is distributed in ambient humidity, the anxiety of an overcast day prophesying catastrophe: everything will go bad in ways that are slow and grey and wet.
the seas crawl inland slump ashore like beached whales, ancient and browning – rotting from the inside out, its heart the size of my body.
birds disappear; cicadas neuter themselves, nothing grows wings, in the dark morning there is no chorus of airborne voices, only the obscenity of our breathing.
and breath comes short, the taste of sweat and orange haze, the length of ever widening days, distance between sunrises slowing like the march of tectonic plates,
it is the end again. another week thrusts itself into the tar colored crevice of memory, and i prepare for sleep, address myself quiet in the mirror, unshowered and rationing water:
goodnight my life. goodnight my unibrow, my old stone bridge, goodnight river of my eyes. goodnight invisible fish swimming down my face, goodnight wet reflection.
last 2 weeks have been madness. my time at Touchstone is almost up -- and with it my reporting project -- but i've been invited to stay on for more writing opportunities, and i'll still try to help with setup & reception when possible.
being an arts reviewer is probably going to feel new and awkward for a while. getting to cover our own shows was great practice but the prospect of having to actually go to openings and stand there with a notepad and pencil in a crowd of mid-50s rich DC arts patrons leaves me apprehensive. i want to try and get art out to The Kids, see if the gap between the underground scene and the gallery scene can be bridged, but the kids don't read longform journalism. and i am not going to become a TikToker over this. for now, zine output will remain consistent, and i'll be trying to get articles into EastCityArt when i can. trying to talk about local art from a youth perspective is not the same as marketing arts reporting to the youth, but my stupid ass still wants to do both. so i'll spam exhibition news on my Instagram story and beg people to send their shit into open calls.
essays and misc. reportage will probably get posted here in the next few days. i'll try to keep the racing posts to a minimum but that's most of my backlog, so be warned.
been a few days. i got sick at the beach and it stuck. i'm home now, to my everlasting comfort; i can't ever be away for long. i feel a moral responsibility to stay in this place despite its problems instead of just escaping somewhere else. because other people without the privileges i have will never be able to leave, in which case i'm placing it on them to try and turn this city around. and that doesn't feel fair.
we're watching Love Island. it's 11:00 a.m. and we're late to the beach, and it's the best day we'll have all week. we're in a cheap vacation rental with extension cords and flyswatters everywhere, the bugs are trying to get in. well, i guess it's really that we pushed them out. i think a lot about what this place used to be like before we raped it. every surface is asphalt, gravel or sand, and the sand is going fast; every few years they dredge more up from the ocean and drop it back on the beaches. last year the beach was really steep, so maybe this time it'll have been filled up and flattened out. the same way the people are, and the air, thick with car exhaust and the low stench of salt marsh.
a few hours later & i'm watching a video about net.art and half-working on an article. i like the smallnet revival but we don't have time machines, we'll never be able to recreate that initial movement. still it's fun to compare these old projects to the new ones; i remember being fascinated by projects like cicada, terminal00 and op011 a few years ago. the crossover between internet art project and ARG is very wide. if i cared enough, i'd learn more html and turn this site into an absolute labyrinth of ugly pages with vaguely philosophical cryptic sentences. it's not so hard -- all you need are some ugly 3d gifs, patent art, stock photos and other prefab materials taken from online archives or old blogs. that reminds me, i never made that video project based off of my massive youtube playlist of uploads with under 1k views. fuck Premiere.
this is the poem i just ad-libbed to Teagan: view the triumph of white America: Wal-Mart weekends, wet asphalt, and a wide featureless sky, nothing beyond it or beside it; starless nights and unimpressed children.
the Eastern Shore will forever remind me of slavery. it's in the ground, the heavy air, the rainbow hanging low over Dunkin' Donuts. route 50 to the beach takes you right past Sussex Correctional Institution, and we watched its guard towers watching us. never have i been closer to history than that spot, a prison built on top of a prison, in a state where more than two-thirds of the incarcerated population is Black. i have walked through the White House, seen the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but i felt a much more profound concentration of America emanating like a miasma from that fortress in the middle of a soybean field than in any white marble palace.
time moves slower out here. i think everyone can tell. the buildings slump under a wide sky, humiliated by themselves, and the people are always leaving but never gone. i wrote this poem about it a year ago:
sunset over soybeans
it's a season of almosts.
the roads give way to water without warning,
the weather never really storming,
only shadow-lined clouds forming.
then absorbing–
back into blue atmosphere sun-bleached
and pale, scarred over with contrails,
another pound upon the scale,
but i don't feel heavy.
the wind slips like thin cloth
so quick against stone-still sand
that the birds barely bother to fly;
they glide against the sun's glare
suspended from strings in the air,
just hanging there
flapping faithlessly like props
aware of their own theater.
i dunno. there's a lot of dread here, but there's dread everywhere, isn't there. the sea levels rise at a rate that could eliminate this place in only a few decades, but the bay is so shallow. it doesn't rain enough. the salt marshes will be pushed further inland, and the trees will die and the ground below them will erode, and the birds will stop coming back, but none of that makes it special. i've never been any other place that felt like this because i haven't been to many other places.
a while back i started putting together an archive of google maps screenshots of this area. they're up on an unused Tumblr blog i had planned to submit to The Wrong Biennale '23-'24, but never finished.
i like google maps a lot, i think it's an underappreciated resource. you can access so many spots all over the world that simply cannot be traversed in real life. i started taking screenshots during the pandemic and never stopped.