Video: BOOK OF THE TUMBLR ON FIRE (A COLLABORATION WITH JOHN NEFF)

"Invited to participate in an evening of artists' lectures on the subject of "magic" organized for the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art by the blog Bad at Sports, but unable to attend the event in person, John Neff and Ivan Lozano instead produced the collaborative "video lecture" BOOK OF THE TUMBLR ON FIRE. Improvised within a tripartate structure over three short editing sessions, BOOK... was assembled from a collection texts and video clips gathered from the web. Its montage technique and "look" were inspired by the wildly heterogeneous visual style of image-and-text based Tumblr microblogs. Using this approach, BOOK... presents a materialist interpretation of "magic," concentrating less on concepts of magical cause and effect and more on the fantastic pleasures that can erupt in the embrace of impurity, polysemy and randomness." -I.L.