Writer Gideon Jacobs muses about society’s Mirror stage in the age of AI in our new Spring issue, “Everything’s Computer.” Order the glossy, full-bleed print mag or a waterproof, weightless, instantly-manifestable e-paper from our online shop >>> /
Photo: Molly Matalon
#spikeartmagazine #everythingscomputer #printmagazine
On May 1st I will be performing a lecture titled “All Images are Quite Useless” as part of @mark.leckey ’s program at @giorno_poetry_systems . Lineup below. Tickets in bio.
Friday, May 1:
Video short by Mark Leckey
Performance by Jay the Bucket Drummer (@the_famousbucketdrummer )
Reading by Hari Kunzru (@hari_kunzru )
Performance by Mick Barr (@ocrilim )
Lecture by Gideon Jacobs titled “All Images Are
Quite Useless” (with Cassandra Jenkins (@cassandrajenkins ) and Jak Ritger (@ja_ak_rtgr )
Concert by Deli Girls (@shitney_queers )
A PALACE OF SPECTACLE: On March 15, we welcomed Dean Kissick (@deankissick ), David Rudnick (@ex_terra ), and Gideon Jacobs (@gideon___jacobs ) in an era-defining conversation on “The End of Images.” As the final event in our Sunday program, “The End of Images” marked a chapter in over 120 years of early cinema and contemporary video.
Photos: @anyagta4ever
These are the final days of “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem” at the Variety Arts Theater.
You have until THIS FRIDAY, March 20, to catch a final glimpse of this cross-century dialogue between early cinema classics and contemporary moving-image art.
General admission is always free; no ticket is required.
IMAGES: A SHOW
Written and Performed by GIDEON JACOBS
Directed by RUBY MCCOLLISTER
Featuring JAY ISRAELSON & HALEY STIEL
Video by CASSANDRA JENKINS & JAK RITGER
Friday, March 20, 8pm
Sunday, March 22, 8pm
Tuesday, March 24, 8pm
Wednesday, March 25, 8pm
$25/$35 – Seating is limited.
TICKET LINK IN BIO.
Gideon Jacobs plays Father Bartholomew Mary, a Second Commandment fundamentalist preacher – as in, he believes we should be taking “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” literally and seriously.
Father Mary believes the apple in the Garden of Eden contained images.
He believes images are what have landed humanity in its current mess.
He believes images must be destroyed.
@gideon___jacobs@ruby.mccollister@jay_is@haleyuka@cassandrajenkins@ja_ak_rtgr
The Julia Stoschek Foundation has invited me, Dean Kissick, and David Rudnick to give a talk titled “The End Of Images” on March 15th at the Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles. It will start at 8pm, just after the Academy Awards. “That’s all folks.”
@juliastoschekfoundation@deankissick@ex_terra@theacademy
NM Reads | Gideon Jacobs, “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” LA Review of Books (2026)
@gideon___jacobs returns to NM with his third essay in a trilogy for the @lareviewofbooks that tracks, in real-time, the American Political machine’s delamination from everyday life through runaway story-drive. In “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” Gideon shows US politics both left and right as having become a read-write medium for collective creative expression more than material governance—a kind of kayfabe where ‘democracy’ takes the form of citizens co-creating storyline with their elected officials and everyone in office has an IMDB profile.
Carly & Lil Internet intro this ep with a short conversation drawing out themes across this trilogy that feel particularly NM Canon. Audio production by @lilinternet
(MIDDLE): Posting more from new story/essay with @lareviewofbooks because am enjoying this multimedia mode and really want to share clip of the work experience that makes Secretary of Education Linda McMahon an ideal and, in a way, highly qualified Trump staffer. To read how story/essay ends, link in biography. 🇺🇸
(BEGINNING) Out today with @lareviewofbooks , the final installment of what we are retroactively calling a three-part series. The first essay, “Trump l’Oeil,” was about why I believed Trump, as a walking-talking image in an image world, had home court advantage in the upcoming election against Harris. The second, “Player One and Main Character,” was about Musk and Trump’s very literal main character syndrome. This last one is a story about politics in a fan-fictional land. All three essays are, essentially, about our species’ relationship to images. All three try to frame DJT as a painful, distracting symptom. Link to full essay in bio — these are just the opening paragraphs. I promise it ends somewhat hopefully. God bless 🇺🇸.
(Thank you @medayao and LARB. Thank you @theodorejacobanthony and @trevorpaglen for help developing these ideas.)
Last spring @avikovacevich and I decided to make and send each other a video every day for 100 days. No constraints, fast, loose, dumb, first thought, best thought, first take, best take. We recently reached day 100. It was a good way to keep in touch. I recommend doing it with someone.
@family_style invited me to write a guest column alongside legends @eileen.myles and #ClaudiaRankine, so I said yes and wrote a short essay titled End Times.
Was invited on @theculturejournalist , a great podcast by @emiliefriedlander and @calamity.dre , to talk about Zohran. I had fun cosplaying as political strategist, was a bit “on one” that morning, especially during this part. (Although receiving a text from Zohran as soon as I started this screen recording makes me feel I am on the right track with my hypotheses about blendings of story and politics, image and reality, order and entropy.)
