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The rise of neo-fascism, the persistent denial of climate change despite its already devastating impact, the increasing threat of nuclear war – to keep current on world events today is to submit to a stream of information that, in its sheer intensity and terror, is utterly unbearable to directly engage. However, rarely do we engage directly. Rather, we receive the news already narrativized, already calibrated to elicit a certain adrenaline/affective response and with just enough of a cliffhanger to ensure we’ll need more. And as readers, we cannot help but keep coming back, taking the news like a ketamine drip, no matter that it renders us catatonic save for the reflex to perpetually refresh the feed. The news immobilizes us physically, but also politically, as the mimetic tendencies of social media warp our commonly held lexicon beyond rational use. We connect through this new psychedelic process of language-making, but in a way that makes us tribal; in a way that causes us not to better understand each other but to weaponize words along micro-political lines. And yet in this narcotized news space, we believe news to be good for us, a supplement we take daily to stay abreast of world affairs even as our ability to democratically respond to them feels increasingly compromised.
Josh Kline addresses this contemporary condition in his special edition for TEXTE ZUR KUNST, “Swallowing News,” framing the once broadly trusted “New York Times” as an addictive drug. For the work, pages from the “Gray Lady” have been pulverized to fill medical-grade gel-caps, and portioned into individual prescription vials.
