2017 - 2018

THE FOLLOWING PAPERS WERE COMPLETED FOR THE MASTER OF ARTS IN VISUAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES PROGRAM AT KENDALL COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN OF FERRIS STATE UNIVERSITY

PLAY IT BACK!

AESTHETICS OF REMANENCE
AND THE CONTEMPORARY RAP MUSIC VIDEO

CRITIC-AS-ARTIST:

PARAESTHETIC THEORY AND THE ERIC ANDRE SHOW

"The late-night talk show has become one of the most prolific, self-sustaining and arguably exploitative genres to be shaped by American television’s history. In its commitment to pleasing sponsors, idealizing celebrities and maintaining a sense of the status quo, the talk show format has remained rigid and unchallenged for decades.

Since its debut on the Adult Swim Network in 2012, The Eric Andre Show has disrupted the inoffensive monotony and disingenuous positivity of the late-night talk show culture by its employment of surreal anti-aesthetic and meta-comedic strategies, essentially laying the foundation for a conceptual slaughter of the talk show format. At first glance, the Eric Andre Show emulates a low-budget public access-style show before dissenting into complete madness, with host Eric Andre wildly demolishing his entire set at the beginning of each episode while being casually ignored by his laconic foil, co-host Hannibal Burress—it’s as if their critical awareness of the archaic banality of the talk show genre is overcome by the sudden urge to completely destroy it from within."

RECOUP/REPEAT/RESIST:

VAPORWAVE AS STRATEGY

"From its beginnings in 2011, vaporwave developed into an internet-meme subculture that includes a subgenre of electronic music and a digital art movement. Inspired by mainstream cultural aesthetics of the 1980s and 1990s, vaporwave explores representations of consumerism and pastiche in parallel to feelings of isolation and alienation in a post-9/11, global-capitalist America. Significantly marked by a nostalgic longing for a time that is fleeing further into a forgotten history, vaporwave aesthetics creates a cognitive map of the bleak affective space of late capitalism."