Zach Blas, Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033

Join us at Bar Laika for a screening of Zach Blas’s Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 (2018, 30:52 minutes).

Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 is a re-imagining of scenes from filmmaker Derek Jarman’s 1978 queer punk film Jubilee, starring Susanne Sachsse and Cassils. Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 follows author Ayn Rand (Susanne Sachsse) and members of her Collective, including economist Alan Greenspan, on an acid trip in 1955. Guided by an artificial intelligence named Azuma, they are transported to a dystopian future Silicon Valley. As Apple, Facebook, and Google campuses burn, Azuma reveals that Ayn has become a celebrity philosopher to tech executives, as her writings foster their entrepreneurial spirit. Amidst the wreckage, Rand and The Collective are introduced to the internet, observe techies being captured by anti-campus groupies, and bear witness to the death of Silicon Valley elite. Once inside an occupied office of Palantir Technologies, the group encounters Nootropix (Cassils), a contra-sexual, contra-internet prophet, who lectures on the end of the internet as we know it. Seeking respite, Rand and The Collective find themselves at Silicon Beach, where chunks of polycrystalline silicon mix with sand and ocean.

Zach Blas is an artist, filmmaker, and writer whose practice spans technical investigation, theoretical research, conceptualism, performance, and science fiction. He is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Blas has exhibited, lectured, and held screenings internationally, recently at the 2018 Gwangju Biennale; the 68th Berlin International Film Festival; Abierto X Obras, Matadero Madrid; 2018 Creative Time Summit, Miami; MAXXI, Rome; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Art in General, New York; Gasworks, London; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore; e-flux, New York; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City. His recent project Contra-Internet is supported by a 2016 Creative Capital award in Emerging Fields and the Arts Council England. His writings can be found in Documentary Across Disciplines, Queer: Documents of Contemporary Art, and e-flux journal. His work has been written about and featured in Artforum, Frieze, ArtReview, Mousse Magazine, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Blas is a 2018-20 Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellow.

For more information, contact laika@e-flux.com.