A weeklong residency at Land and Sea in Oakland, California titled ‘Nihil’.
Our obsession with apocalypse narratives, the cynical ascendancy of Donald Trump, suicide bombers…so much of our political and cultural reality reflects that we can sooner see our own destruction than manifest solutions.
With the support of Land and Sea, I began research into the edges of this nihilism.
My week at Land and Sea was a period of practice-based research and experimentation, culminating in an evening of musical performance, and a zine of photography and writing that explores the idea of “anti-immanence”.
Drawing from:
Schopenhauer & Sartre
Graham Harman & Eugene Thacker
New French Extremity
Black Metal & Doom Metal
Ligotti & Laird Baron & Lovecraft…
If we are to avoid political collapse and personal despair, it is critical that we understand nihilism and stare it dead in the eye without flinching.
“Nihil” would serve to view nihilism as pathological. Not as a demon to be banished through ritual, but a very real set of circumstances to be confronted and understood.
