Jon Rafman Stages 'Memento Hikikomori' in Brisbane Until Sept. 27
Updated
Updated · The Conversation · Sep 8
Jon Rafman Stages 'Memento Hikikomori' in Brisbane Until Sept. 27
3 articles · Updated · The Conversation · Sep 8
Summary
Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art is showing Jon Rafman’s mini-retrospective “Memento Hikikomori” through Sept. 27, centering on how internet culture turns alienation, voyeurism and excess into seductive images.
2008’s ongoing “The Nine Eyes of Google Street View” anchors the show, with 15×10cm prints drawn from Google’s accidental captures of violence, glitches and beauty, recasting machine mapping as eerie surveillance.
2025 work “The Cleaners” extends that material into a dystopian video about deletion and distortion, while “Main Stream Media Network” packages AI-like avatars and internet subcultures as trashy, MTV-style spectacle.
1981-born Rafman has long mined fringe-web culture, and the exhibition argues that his criticism works by reproducing the same hooks—novelty, stimulation and endless scrolling—that keep viewers looking.