There’s a dark humor to Paul Chan’s work that seems appropriate to today’s socio-political climate. That’s not surprising, considering his 2011 interview with Rhizome touches on our last conservative government’s disastrous invasion of Iraq as an impetus for art making. “weatherman.gif”, for example was created in 2004, shortly after the war began. It feel especially relevant now—especially considering the East Coast’s crazy temperature swings today and apocalyptic climate outlook.
Weatherman.gif, gif based on scene from RE:The_Operation (2004)
Were it not for just how strange and wonderful this GIF of human sushi is, I would say it’s nearly impossible to pick just one GIF from Robert Ek‘s work. All of his work is bizarre and carefully rendered—check out the subtle differences in texture between the rice, mask, “tuna”, and seaweed. The figure’s fidgety hands are the thing that really sell this as one of the best-crafted GIFs I’ve seen in a long time.
Also: is this one of those fetishes that didn’t exist like, 8 years ago but now has its own convention thanks to a weird corner of Reddit? Let’s hope so, because if “human sushi-ing” is now a thing, our Wednesday ritual of NSFW GIFs is about to get a lot more interesting.
I can’t imagine how much work it is to be a mom, but I do often consider this: for every obnoxious, need, or downright terrible person in the world, there’s a mother who had to put up with them. That’s some serious strength!
Bill Domonkos has an entire Tumblr full of somewhat creepy black-and-white GIFs. These remind me of early surrealist experiments in film and animation. Mostly, the top GIF sums up the experience of running for the train in the morning when you feel totally dead.
Okay, when we warn that this is a NSFW GIF of the Hump Day post, we mean it. There are tons of dicks after the jump.
That being said, this is one of the weirdest online subcultures we’ve stumbled across in a while, and for that we love it. People like using their smartphones for two things: sexting and playing Pokémon GO. Now, there’s a Tumblr that combines both: Poképeen! Basically, a community of Pokémon/dick pic enthusiasts attempt to catch the augmented reality critters on their dicks and send documentation to whatever sick genius runs the blog.
Brace yourselves for serious full-frontal male nudity, complete with Pidgeys swooping in to perch.
Okay, this GIF shouldn’t be considered NSFW at all, but today is Frida Kahlo’s birthday and it’s the only vaguely “inappropriate” animated GIF I can find, shockingly. It’s a scene from the 2002 biopic Frida, depicting a mostly-clothed Salma Hayek in the titular role painting a topless self-portrait. Why would this possibly be NSFW? Because Facebook hates art historical nudity. Paddy knows all-too-well how annoying violating Facebook’s decency rules can be.
You know who else would hate Facebook’s censorship rules? Frida Kahlo, who would be 109 today. She would probably come up with some incredibly original NSFW revenge tableau to post all over their servers. Because Frida was a badass. She was such a badass that a documentary about her life and work even sparked controversy in the supposedly-ultra-liberal Portland school district earlier this year. One can only imagine how escandalosa Kahlo must have been during the first half of the 20th century. And she probably gave zero fucks about it.
For the past month or so, my boyfriend and I have had this inside joke thing where one of us will surprise the other with an animated GIF of AB Soto dancing whenever one of us is sad or stressed-out or otherwise feeling blue. It’s uncanny how effective Soto’s dancing is at instantly cheering us up. Like, it’s impossible to gaze upon this glittery master of cha-cha and not smile.
If our household is any indication, I’m guessing most of the AFC community is having a really rough Monday. We’re all still grieving the 50, mostly Latinx, queer people who were murdered in Orlando yesterday morning. And most of the internet seems to have an agenda that’s anything but helpful to the healing process. But it’s probably healthy to give your face’s crying/arguing muscles a break. To that end, I’m sharing my cheering-up secret strategy with you all. Here’s a collection of AB Soto dancing GIFs that are guaranteed to make you smile. We all need some queer Mexican-American sparkle magic to remind us that the world isn’t entirely horrible, and that gay nightlife is totally worth fighting for, no matter how scary going out seems right now.
More than a dozen dancing AB Soto GIFs, after the jump:
This is a GIF of Pussy Riot doing their thing by illustrator Edith Carron. It’s cute and colorful but a little rough, just like their brand of punk. The color palette reminds me of my favorite Pussy Riot music video (actually, probably one of my favorite songs of all time) Kropotkin Vodka:
In the video, the band attacks businesses owned/patronized by the Moscow elite who support Putin and turns them into guerrilla concerts. It’s pretty fucking badass. Every time I think “wow! I’m sure taking a stand by boycotting Apple products!” I like to remind myself that Pussy Riot lit a fashion show on fire with the threat of Russian prison (or likely, worse) hanging over their heads. Rock on, and stay un-arrested you fabulous queens!
Last week, GRIN Gallery in Providence opened the AFC-curated exhibition Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies: The Animated GIF as Place. It’s the IRL version of our online exhibition with Providence College—Galleries and will be installed until July 2nd. GRIN sent us these install shots, and it’s pretty remarkable how different and complimentary the physical show feels to the online component.
In the gallery, we installed GIFs included in the online exhibition from Hugo Moreno, Sara Ludy, Petra Cortright, Dina Kelberman, Ying Miao, Clement Valla, and Gizelle Zatonyl as well as different works from Nicolas Sassoon and Wickerham & Lomax. We also installed two pieces from Victoria Fu: the video projection “Velvet Peel 2” and animated neon sculpture “Pinch-Zoom.” These are all about the way bodies relate to screens and illusionistic space, so Fu was a perfect fit for an IRL exhibition about digital spaces.
We also screened all of the GIFs in the exhibition as well as longer video works from the artists and longer-form GIFs from Jacolby Satterwhite. GRIN (60 Valley Street, Unit 3
Providence, RI) is hosting another outdoor screening on June 25th from 8 – 10 p.m., so if you didn’t catch the opening, be sure to check it out! We have to say, even if we hadn’t curated this show, we’d be giving it a giant neon thumbs-up.
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Okay, when we warn that this is a NSFW GIF of the Hump Day post, we mean it. There are tons of dicks after the jump.
This is a GIF of Pussy Riot doing their thing by illustrator 
