Digital capture, reproduction, and dissemination technologies have facilitated a collapsing of history. Anyone today can virtually witness the Arab Spring, episodes of Star Trek, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, role play a zombie holocaust or alien invasion, and any number of other things simultaneously. All time and space, fiction and non-fiction, is compressed through a mediated experience of recorded (and recording) events.
The readily accessible circulation of all previous and all occurring cultural products has given rise to everything being in vogue simultaneously – all trends and fads, all lifestyles and worldviews, and all representations of these. This is reflected in contemporary art and fashion, where each creative work is a convergence of distanciated influences – an oblivious pastiche of styles devoid of their originating contexts.
It’s in this sense that we live in a retrozoic age of recycled simulacra.
*The Retrozoic series is comprised of a subset of representative works from Miscellania.
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