#// truly the more memes i bring nana into. the more i feel some sort of way

[tewwor]

sometimes i look at how i depict nana and think it could be better but then i see how yall are so receptive to it and its reassuring and makes me soft

[naturally-recklessly]

What advice would you give to a new RPer? What does your URL mean?  How involved are you in your rp community?  What do you do when you get writer’s block? What has made you completely lose your chill? 

⨳ — MUNDAY

1. What advice would you give to a new RPer ?  My best advice would be to just have fun ! To truly experiment around your blog —write all sorts of plots that bring you joy, post little things about your muse(s) (be it edits, headcanons, playlists, etc...) or even customize a template that really fits your muse. Just never feel pressured to do things only because the majority of people are also doing them — what matters is if you enjoy them ! Otherwise, you might find yourself burned out pretty quickly. Speaking of which, whenever you feel like writing is more of a chore than something that brings you pleasure, by all means take a break — the rp partners that truly value you will understand. And last but not least, never be afraid to communicate and reach out ! As an introvert, I know this is better said than done, but trust me that for the most part, you'll only end up regretting the times you didn't. 😊

2. What does your URL mean?  Back when I started this blog in 2019, I only had two muses — Nana (an OC heavily inspired by Ai Yazawa's manga and its respective anime, which was and still is very dear to me), and Rupert (a canon muse from the movie "Sex Doll", who was so mysterious in his source material that I had to rely on headcanons to build his backstory 😆). So the url and blog's name was a direct reference to them & their personalities — Naturally Nana, Recklessly Rupert.

3. How involved are you in your rp community?  I'd say that at the moment I'm not too involved in the rp community — I only rp on this blog and keep a small circle with meaningful interactions (mostly because I've recently came back from a hiatus and I'm taking baby steps before venturing any further 😆). But speaking of meaningful interactions, I'm the kind of partner that gets super invested in our muses' little universes and absolutely loves to create edits/moodboards & playlists for them ! I also run a memes and resources blog for the rpc — Mimi's Memes — which has been somewhat inactive lately, but I do plan on starting to create things again. 😊

4. What do you do when you get writer’s block?  Most of the time, I just take a break and try to entertain myself with other activities. More often than not, inspiration will come, sparkled by a scene from a movie/series or some lyrics from a song. 😊 Speaking of which, I find it really helpful to write listening to some music ! I've got a few songs that I associate with the muses (mine and/or my partner's) or the scene I'm working on, and it really helps setting the mood and getting those replies flowing !

5. What has made you completely lose your chill?  I must say that in all these years, I've been lucky enough to avoid any unnecessary drama and toxicity, and therefore my experience has been mostly positive. So thankfully I don't really have anything to comment on this topic. 🙏

( Thank you so much for sending these, @niragixpsych ! I wish you a wonderful week ! 💖 )

[abdicatedarchive]

Winter Trip || Chase and Jonah

SETTING: The boys room.

Chase: "You ready for this party?" said Chase unpacking the alcohol from the bottom of his bag. "I have a few things" he added, "Hopefully your dad doesn't come check on you or me..." said the boy tossing Jonah the bottle of liquor. They deserved to have some fun, and hangout just the two of them. He was so busy with Gabrielle most of the time, so they really only got to hangout online or in school. Never really just having fun as the boys. 

Jonah: "Yep. We deserve a little fun." Jonah answered with a single nod as he grabbed the bottle from Chase. "Dude, I shouldn't have been shocked that he was chaperoning, but I was. He's been lowkey hovering and it gets me all nervous for no reason. I'm a good individual, I'm not doing anything wrong." he shrugged his shoulders. Jonah felt like the two did need some kind of break, both for different reasons. "You doing good? Sorry we haven't really gotten to hang out much this week."

Chase: "You'd think he'd want to take a break from being principal and just stay at home and let the chaperones just be chaperones. But no, not everyone is as cool as Wren's Nana. Which fucking sucks" said Chase as he pulled out a chaser from his bag. Things had been tough with Gabrielle in general, almost the whole time they had been dating. He loved her, but he was just so worried about her all the time. It was all consuming worry. His grades had been slipping a little even. "I mean ... I miss him a lot. But she's been ... she's been doing pretty okay despite everything" said Chase, "how about you?" he asked, "I know my situation is a little different. But he was one of our boys" said Chase as he got the bottle back and took a swig before taking a sip of the chaser.

Jonah: "He's cool, but not Nana level cool. Which reminds me, I wonder if she hates me... I'm too scared to even say hello." Jonah sighed, thinking about the possibility of queen Nana hating him for what he did to Rory. He listened to Chase, giving his friend a sad look. Of course he would never truly understand how he felt, but he could somewhat relate to losing someone very close to him. "If there's anything I could do to help, you could always let me know." he said with a sad smile. Chase had a lot to deal with, so if there was any way Jonah could help, he would. "I'm fine." he lied, he wasn't exactly fine. Dealing with Griffin brought back a lot of thoughts of his parents and then also dealing with what happened with Devyn was a lot. But he didn't need anyone worrying about him. "Just trying to come to terms with everything, know?

Chase: "Nah, I feel like Nana is probably still cool with you" said Chase, he didn't really know. But even if she did hold grudges, Jonah seemed to be an adorable confused exception. "Yeah man, thank you" he replied earnestly, "You've been through a lot so I didn't want to put the pressure on. I also just needed to pull closer to my family at home and my family here, so that's on me for being distant" Chase affirmed for the other boy. "Have you talked about Devyn with anyone, like honestly?" Chase asked, he knew Jonah was fine. He understood that, and he didn't think his friend would lie. But he knew Jonah was really private, and if he hadn't really talked it out, what was the good in that? But Chase was also a talker, he didn't get when people didn't talk things out. He had been on the phone with his parents a lot in the last few months, just going through every little thing. That's why he'd been able to have such a cool head about it all, except that time he yelled at Sadie. He still felt a little bad about that, but he was protecting his family.

Jonah: "I can't avoid her forever, I'm surprised I have for this long considering all the times we go to Wren's house to game." Jonah smiled at Chase and shook his head, "No it's fine. I like my alone time anyways." He knew Chase was dealing with a lot too and hoped that giving him space was the right approach to all of this. Sometimes it could be, but he didn't want Chase to think he didn't care either. "I kinda close everyone off when I get in these moods, so sorry that I never came to check up on you. I don't know, I just hoped you wanted your space as well. I didn't want it to come off as me not caring. You know I care about you, dude." he said with a friendly smile. That was his bro. Jonah's expression softened once Chase mentioned Devyn, "Uh no not really. I guess there's not much to say, right? B-But I'm fine, I'm sure she is too. She wouldn't wanna be tied down to me." he shook his head, letting his negative thoughts take over yet again. "Has she brought me up? Like to you guys at practice or something?"

Chase: Chase smiled and pat his friend on the shoulder, "I know man, I understand" he said to comfort his friend. This had been tough all around, but he didn't want to bring up old feelings for Jonah about his parents. The Griffin incident weighed on everybody in ways that couldn't have been predicted. "I care about you too, brothers for life" said Chase. He meant it. Jonah was his first friend here outside of cheerleading, someone he really connected with. Once they were on the topic of Devyn, Chase realized that he hadn't heard much of it from Devyn, only the stuff about Antonio. He really didn't want to mention it, "She hasn't mentioned you too much" Chase half lied, he was not about to rat her out for sleeping with Antonio. But he also felt like he needed to. But he didn't want to hurt Jonah any more than he already was. It was a hard line to follow. "Do you ... want to be with her? Like if you just looked at her as a person?" he asked.

Jonah: Jonah smiled and nodded his head at Chase, "Brothers for life." he repeated. It wasn't until he got moved to White Lake that he actually started to get some friends. Friends that actually cared about him. His mind got in the way a lot and every now and then he'd convince himself that he was a bother and that all the friends actually hated him. But thankfully, he wasn't in one of the moments right now. He was really grateful to have met Chase. They were similar in many ways but complete opposites in others, though they always balanced each other out nicely. He sighed at the question given to him. He wished everything wasn't so complicated. "I wanted to, I really liked her. But I..." he paused, trying to find the words to explain what he was thinking without looking like some attention seeker. "I don't think so highly of myself, not really, and all of that with her and my brother just made me feel like shit. Like even more shit than I already do." he forced a weak laugh. "I don't wanna feel like this anymore, it's hard enough trying to love myself as it is." he regretted how much he said. No one wants to hear this. "Plus, the idea of having sex with someone Jesse had sex with makes me kinda uncomfortable, not gonna lie." he added in to somewhat lighten the mood. It wasn't a lie, it was something that was weird for him.

Chase: "I get it, you don't want to be a pick me choose me kind of guy. But it sucks to constantly be put on the back burner like that. I know I've felt that way before" said Chase, "but even if you ... don't think ya know. Highly of you. I do. No homo. You deserve to be someone's first pick" he added. He hated seeing Jonah so down on himself, he knew he had problems and everything, but everyone deserves love. Chase had done some awful things to people, but even he deserved love. "You deserve everything this world has to offer you, the world owes you a lot" Chase said passing him the alcohol back. He laughed quietly when Jonah added that it would be weird to have sex with someone who had slept with his brother, "Yeah, that is kinda gross" he said with a smile, "If Gabrielle had a sister ... I would never. That makes me uncomfortable".

Jonah: Jonah sort of regretted everything he said to Chase. He didn't want his friend to think he was just some loser than was begging for compliments. The no homo comment did make him chuckle though. "Right. I feel the same way about you, man. No homo, obviously." he shook his head and laughed. "Oh uh, thank you. That's... that's nice of you to say." he said awkwardly as he grabbed the bottle and took a sip. He didn't want to sound like he didn't care what Chase was saying, he just wasn't actually sure how to respond to something so nice. It was a little pathetic. "Yeah, I stayed thinking about it. Like I wanted to cause duh, but also nooooo." he said with wide eyes. "Thanks, man. For everything." he said with a small smile. "You've always been super nice to me, since the moment we met each other." he told Chase, hoping he wasn't being too sappy. "You know I'm always here for you, if you need anything. Like if you ever need to talk. About anything." he patted his friend's shoulder. He knew Chase had a lot to deal with, so Jonah wanted to make sure Chase knew there was someone there for him.

Chase: Chase smiled as his friend repeated no homo to him. Obviously neither of them really cared, it was more of an old school meme reference to the two of them. He knew how uncomfortable Jonah could get with compliments, but he was going to try his hardest to build his buddy up. "I mean cause duh, she's hot ... but getting over something like that is weird. Even like if someone was to date one step sibling and then the other ... like I don't know. Especially if they've been family long enough, even that is still weird. I feel like you need to be in it for like ... soulmate shit if you're gonna be doing that" Chase rambled on. When Jonah thanked him, he felt good about it. It wasn't like being there for Jonah was anything that deserved a thank you. It was just something he wanted to do. "We were just always supposed to be brothers man, our interests are too matching not to" Chase replied. They were really on the same wavelength all the time, even though their personalities were so different. It was a comfortable balance between Chase's energy and Jonah's lack there of. Chase knew how to rile Jonah up, and Jonah knew how to relax Chase. Chase swallowed, Gabrielle had given him permission earlier, but he knew he wanted to do this now. "There's um, something I have to tell you man" said Chase, "so like I know me moving here doesn't make a ton of sense. Like at all. People just choose to ignore it or I brush it off with something. But dude, you have to promise me you'll never tell anyone. Not even Jesse. Are you cool with that information? If not, tell me" Chase divulged. He probably had already said too much if Jonah was not in the headspace for the news.

Jonah: Jonah nodded his head in agreement with Chase, he completely understood where he was coming from. Yes, he liked Devyn but Jesse was not only his brother, but his twin brother. It was too weird. "Yeah exactly. I bet Jesse's pretty relieved about it all too. I'm sure it was always weird for him and if we ended up dating, I couldn't even imagine how bizarre it would've been if I invited her over for dinner or for the holidays." he shook his head. He hated the situation he was in, but maybe things turning out like this was for the better. Jonah smiled at Chase once he said they were supposed to be brothers. He had lost a lot of family at a young age, but he was grateful for, not only the family members he still had, but also for the people that came into his life and became family, like Chase. It was a nice little bonus to have someone that was into the same stuff as him too. "Not sure what I'd do without you at this point, man. Just reciting the whole battle scene from Revenge of the Sith by myself, I guess." he joked. Jonah furrowed his brows at Chase, his tone was a lot more serious. That wasn't really like him. Chase was right, his moving situation didn't make a whole lot of sense to him, but he decided not think too hard on it. But now Jonah was getting nervous. Was Chase on the run? Is he some kind of criminal on the world's most wanted list? Is his name even Chase Stephens? "Um, of course I won't tell anyone. Not Jesse, not Juliette. No one. Is everything okay?"

Chase: "I mean, it can be done" said Chase laughing a little, but he much preferred reciting the scene with Jonah. It was one of their favorite things to reenact the final fight scene. Once to tone had changed to more serious and Jonah had agreed not to tell anyone, Chase finally was able to tell someone. "I ... well. Gabrielle got pregnant when we were 15. Her um, her little sister is actually her daughter. Well my daughter" disclosed Chase.  He had wanted to tell someone for so long, and now it wasn't coming out the way he wanted it to. "Her parents made me and my family sign a ton of paper work and made me move out here" Chase added, "so yeah ... I have a kid? I know it's weird. But I wanted to tell you" said Chase taking a small pull of the liquor bottle before passing it over. He had no idea how Jonah was going to react. It was such a strange thing to learn about a friend. 

Jonah: Jonah listened to what Chase was saying with furrowed brows. He stayed quiet before breaking out into laughter and pushing his friend lightly, "Dude what the fuck, you scared me. I thought you were serious for a second." he shook his head, still laughing. Jonah thought it was an obvious joke. "You brought up how weird your living situation was, and I thought you were gonna tell me you were some crazy criminal on the run. Don't scare me like that." Once his laughs died down, he looked at Chase with a smile before that slowly disappeared. He just looked at Chase's expression for a second before his eyes practically bugged out of his face. "Oh my god... wait, are you serious?" he asked, shocked from the information he was given. Jonah instantly felt bad for laughing a second ago. "L-l-like a father? A real one? Oh my god, I-I-I'm so sorry. I was laughing cause I thought... I thought you messing around."

Chase: Jonah was ... laughing at him? Oh my god, he thinks it's an elaborate prank. Fuck, thought Chase. He had no way to tell Jonah he was being serious except to keep the same look on his face. Then he saw it hit Jonah that he was telling the truth. "I mean, it would be a sick joke. I wish it was, sometimes. Not to be like a bummer, I mean I love my kid. But like, me? A father? It's still weird. I'm a kid" Chase rambled. It was confusing to tell Jonah, because it just was so ... well it wasn't Chase. Chase didn't seem like that kind of guy, not that there's a kind of guy who is a father at 17, but the concept of it definitely didn't fit. "It's weird, I know. It takes a while to sink in. I have to remind myself"

Jonah: Jonah was in complete shock, it still wasn't completely getting to his head that Chase had a kid. A whole human being. "I just, uh, wasn't expecting that. At all." he said slowly. "I mean you seem like the type of person that would be great with kids." he said with a small smile. Knowing that Chase had to keep his child a secret hurt Jonah. To pretend that she was Gabrielle's sister instead. "Well I'm not gonna tell anyone, I swear." he shook his head quickly. It was nice to know that Chase trusted him this much though. "That's not for me to tell. Are you okay though? Like with moving here and signing all those papers?"

Chase: "Yeah, that's kind of the point" said Chase with a laugh. The Hale's had made sure of that. "Thank god" he responded when Jonah said he was going to tell anyone, "I trust you a lot to tell you" he added. It was a huge step for him, he hadn't told anyone. Ever. Gabrielle had blabbed to Juliette when she was drunk, he should probably mention that. "Juliette knows" said the boy, "so if you need to freak out with someone who isn't me. She's the person". Chase thought about what he asked for a second, "I mean, it's rough. But I'm making it through fine. They're paying for everything, and my college" Chase replied.

Jonah: Jonah was actually pretty relieved to know that Juliette of all people already knew. "Is she the only other person that knows?" he asked curiously. He raised his brows as Chase said that they were paying for everything, including his college. "Wow, well at least there's some kind of silver lining?" he said as more of a question. He took one more sip from the bottle before passing it back to his friend. "I'm not really sure what kind of help I could offer, but if you need anything... with all of this, you could let me know. Even if it's just you ranting about parenting." he raised his shoulders, it still felt so weird saying that out loud.

Chase: "Yup, just you two ... and of course my family and her family" said Chase with a shrug. It was all so weird. Especially being the guy, like he knew everything was so different for Gabrielle. "Silver lining and her family owning my ass" said Chase taking a swig from the bottle after it was passed back. "Thanks, I need it sometimes" he replied. It had been a good talk. Jonah was really the greatest friend he could ask for.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Dismantling Colonial Fantasies About Puerto Rico

Still from one of Shey Rivera Ríos, “Puerto Rico $$$ El Carnero 111,” GIF for Fantasy Island (all images courtesy the artist)

An orchestra soars over the soft-focus aerial view of waves rolling along the shore of a tropical island. At the first sight of a small aircraft streaming beyond the palm fronds, Hervé Villechaize, playing Tattoo, Fantasy Island’s indigenous sidekick, rings a bell in a white tower. “The plane! The plane!” he calls to Ricardo Montalbán. Wearing a white suit and black tie, Montalbán holds court as Mr. Roarke, the island’s overseer, who taps his wristwatch in the doorway of an ornate white lodge and says to Tattoo, “Our guests are arriving on time, to the second.” Tattoo responds, “They always do, and you always act like it’s a miracle.” “My dear Tattoo,” says Roarke, “when each guest is paying $50,000 for a three-day stay on Fantasy Island, he or she deserves miracles.” Tattoo nods and says, “Aye, boss.” And so the television show’s opening theme repeated each Friday night from 1977 to 1984.

Fantasy Island went off the air a few years before I discovered the advertising portfolio in the back pages of the New York Times Magazine, where real estate promised a separate peace: grids of sky blue windows; expanses of white carpet studded with glass tables, no tumblers or mugs to spill; stone patios marked with mirrored pools, all for sale. The dwellings in the advertisements were impossibly expensive — they cost numbers higher than I’d ever counted — but, in my child’s mind, they seemed attainable. My favorite advertisement featured an aerial view of a luxury hotel’s nodal network of swimming environments: triangular and rhomboid pools connected by waterways and fed by waterfalls — a circuitous and continuously flowing system. Paradise uncorrupted. The nodal network — its flat landscape, its grid under a soft-focus lens, its sublime elimination of flaw and filigree — was a metaphor for both ownership and containment.

My mother, with whom I watched Fantasy Island every Friday night during the first few years of my childhood, sliced the ad’s page from the magazine and hung its tidiness, its evenly distributed sunlight, on our refrigerator door with a magnet. Its luxury was a life of lawful symmetry. Our own faded linoleum and pilled brown carpet, and later, certain poems and paintings, taught me that sunlight, while cast evenly, doesn’t touch everything in the same way. Only in advertisements, in gold paintings of saints, and on Minimalism’s flat canvases does illumination touch all surfaces equitably, with a contrived but glorious beneficence.

Shey Rivera Ríos in the Fantasy Island real estate office as AS220 (photo by Sussy Santana)

In Shey Rivera Ríos’s Fantasy Island, an immersive installation currently on view at AS220’s Project Space in Providence, Rhode Island, the island “miracle” that’s marketed to mainland American consumers is simulated and détourned using sculpture, video and GIF, sound, a series of talks, and a zine. (Rivera is also the artistic director of AS220.) From the gridded walls of her “office” to the glass desk where she “works,” Rivera re-creates a late ’80s luxury advertisement interior and uses it as a gathering place where she and her audience can discuss colonialism’s abuses with sincerity. On screens displayed throughout the installation, GIF collages juxtapose Puerto Rico’s pixilated landscape with flashing and scrolling financial and religious iconography.

Rivera challenges the calcification of colonial narratives by interrogating mainstream takes on the island’s culture. Her work brings to light how gentrification is not only an occupation of a physical place but also a takeover of the territory of the imagination, how it alters landscapes while working to reshape our hopes, desires, and visions of possible futures. Fantasy Island asks us to question the obsolete utopias sold to us in luxury real estate advertisements — in particular, the ones that call on Modernism’s tropes of order, harmony, and structural integrity to sell a miraculous experience, while denying the disorder they wreak in co-opted cultural, economic, and environmental landscapes.

*   *   *

Jasmine Dreame Wagner: Tell us about the landscape and the debt crisis in Puerto Rico and how Fantasy Island explores themes of inflation, development, and displacement in San Juan and the surrounding mountains, beaches, and rainforest.

Shey Rivera Ríos: Puerto Rico has been on a slow decline toward a deep economic crisis for the past decade, caused by our colonial status and the way the island is used as a hub to grow and incentivize corporations without creating systems to support the island’s own economic advancement. The island’s debt is currently $120 billion. We’ve seen the largest migration in our history within the past five years: up to one million Boricuas have left the island and moved, primarily to south Florida and New England.

Fantasy Island is an attempt to create space for dialogue on this topic and on three big -isms: imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. As a physical and virtual space, Fantasy Island re-creates the interior of a 1990s luxury real estate office in Puerto Rico. The piece speaks to colonial perspectives on Puerto Rico as a tropical paradise, a vacationer’s dream, a vision of exotic luxury (the island’s name means “Rich Port” in Spanish), in the face of a profound economic crisis that affects the lives of millions of local residents. It speaks to how Caribbean islands are used to create fantasy experiences for American and European tourists, visitors who remain detached from the sociopolitical and historical realities of the island and the imprint of colonization.

Shey Rivera Ríos, “Prayers to Nana Buruku altar” (photo by Lesean Thomas)

This piece is about disconnection. The viewer enters a space defined by black-and-white grid lines, a simulation of some sort of digital space without a true location. The installation aims to create the feeling of being displaced. Where am I? In a large monitor, a blue sky with white clouds plays on a loop. Two monitors display animated GIFs featuring manipulated images of mansions and luxury condos, spackled with religious iconography and American dollar signs. Majestic palm trees, an office desk, a Greek bust fill a landscape reminiscent of vaporwave album covers and Tumblr blogs. The room features an altar crafted with both digital and analogue tools, an altar to Nana Buruku, grandmother of the Orishas in the Yoruba mythology and spirituality. The altar is a modified version of Fra Filipo Lippi’s “Madonna with Child and Scenes from the Life of St. Anne” (1452). This is a tribute to Caribbean syncretism: Saint Anne is correlated with Nana Buruku in Yoruba spiritual practice. West African slaves were able to continue their spiritual and religious practices by aligning their own deities with Catholic Saints. There’s so much to Puerto Rico that people in the mainland United States don’t know. 

JDW: Entering an installation requires a certain sincerity of presence. The GIF — a primitive image format designed in the early days of the internet — is detached and humorous. So many GIFs are jokes. Can a GIF be sincere? Could you talk about your use of humor?

Shey Rivera Ríos, “Promesa777”

SRR: I have a tendency to be too serious in most of my work. That’s changed quite a bit since I started creating work with Jason Curzake in our performance project ISLANDS. Certain topics require gravity and depth, but humor can make them accessible and relatable, if used effectively.

One of my favorite movies is Satoshi Kon’s Paprika. In one of the scenes, the character Paprika meets the detective in a restaurant in his dream. She tells him, “Don’t you think dreams and the internet are similar? They are both areas where the repressed conscious mind vents.” Memes and GIFs exemplify how the virtual collective mind self-reflects, self-punishes, and self-criticizes. Meme and GIF humor bring to light many screwed-up aspects of humanity and how we exist and interact in the physical realm. I believe that in their humor, memes and GIFs are genuine. They call out, but they also speak volumes of the person or collective who created them, even more so if they become viral — they are evidence of a general collective understanding, perspective, or feeling. 

JDW: In the current political climate, the need for organized resistance and for both political and emotional solidarity echoes through our communities, our artworks, our social media feeds, and our economy. Could you talk a bit about bridging the physical, the imaginary, the virtual, and the economic?

SRR: I feel like we are just learning the ropes on how to balance it all and make it work in a healthy, holistic way. We are in a new chapter of our evolution toward engaging with multiple mediums and creating as we consume in multiple dimensions. Nowadays, we, as individuals, are everywhere! Fragments of our selves exist throughout the web on multiple channels. We curate these fragments. But physical space and experiences will always be necessary, because we feel and experience things in the flesh. Even virtual reality technologies are an attempt to re-create the sensation of physical presence.

Installation view, Shey Rivera Ríos, Fantasy Island at AS220

Physical space and community are necessary for healing. We all desire to feel like we belong to something greater and are contributing toward a greater cause. That’s inherent to our nature as social creatures who make things. I truly think that democratizing access and facilitating freedom of expression can impact the world in positive ways. This not only applies in terms of voice, but it must inform how we create alternative systems of being, of monetizing our work, of trade and barter, and how we build community. We can’t just operate under a western European capitalist model that only watches for the interests of a few elite groups of a similar cultural and racial background. Plurality is the future, if we wish to create equitable systems.

Latinx communities, communities of color, inherently have art and culture embedded into our day-to-day way of being. Dance, food, art, design, apparel, craft, convening, all of it is part of cultural expression. Our cultures have rich histories, our own technologies, our own ways of passing down knowledge and creating community and exchange. Puerto Rico certainly does. The colonized perspective is something deep, and we need to wake from it. Artistic practice is part of daily life, the conceptual and physical space where we practice our individuality or collaborative spirit, our humanity. In art we can claim ownership of our own narrative, instead of letting others define that for us. Art is the place where we can dismantle oppression.

Art is voice, and where you create space for your voice, you find community. Where you find community, you invest emotionally and financially. This, in turn, becomes economic development and investment in physical spaces, as well as community assets, education, health care, and public services.

Performance by Huáscar Robles in Shey Rivera Ríos’s Fantasy Island (photo by LeSean Thomas)

JDW: I’m interested in your perspective on vaporwave as an emergent genre that uses both collage and erasure to reclaim privatized, corporatized, and anonymized space. I’m thinking of how vaporwave music artists sample soundtracks of generic Muzak or incorporate training videos from the ’80s and ’90s, clipping and stitching together sounds that are essentially “unauthored,” or authored by non-human entities. Artists like Macintosh Plus and Saint Pepsi have adopted corporate monikers in lieu of their given names, a form of self-erasure, signaling perhaps a reluctance to become visible figureheads and a shrugging off rock and roll’s cult of the star. Also, their punk disregard of trademark laws. Could you talk about the ways that Fantasy Island participates in vaporwave or challenges it?

SRR: Vaporwave and A.E.S.T.H.E.T.I.C. are part of an offbeat art and music movement that speaks to a vision of a future that is now obsolete. Its aesthetic is comprised of nostalgia, irony, dark humor, and hopelessness. Trashy corporate culture gone glitch. Growing up connected to internet pop culture and digital media, I loved it because it appropriates consumer culture in a way where the culture is taken over, remixed, and reconfigured by its users. Branding is always about exerting control. This movement takes control and redefines it. It’s culture jamming, not a new term. Many of us who grew up in the ’90s are familiar with it.

I’m fascinated with culture’s cyclic nature, how the aesthetics of past decades come back to subvert our present and challenge our future. I’m a gamer and an internet addict. I owned my first computer when I was 13, Windows 95. It was the beginning of a new life. The Windows 95 aesthetic influenced my perspective and creative practice — I’ve been an active gamer since 1989 with the Nintendo 8-bit. I still play ROMs of classic games on a hacked Nintendo Wii, and I own a PS4. I’m infatuated with open world games like FallOut4. I love simulation games with complex storylines inspired by science and history, with postapocalyptic settings, or super cute 2D side-scrolling games like Maple Story, LaTale, and other MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games). I’m also a huge anime fan, and much of my academic background was spent studying postwar Japanese visual culture, how Japan used animation to exorcise its cultural trauma after WWII, as well as the power and complexity of fandom as a vehicle of creative power.

Shey Rivera Ríos, “DoradoBeach888”

My love for the internet informs my practice and certainly informs the creation of Fantasy Island. I didn’t go to art school. My art making is informed by my social and professional practice, as well as self-led research and artistic collaboration. I like concept, intimacy, and immersion — that’s why I love performance and installation, especially full-room, immersive experiences. Installation and internet art allow us to practice our agency through remix culture; we can challenge systems of oppression. Vaporwave and A.E.S.T.H.E.T.I.C. are subversive, visually and aurally. They shine light on the idea of failed white progress and obsolete modernism. To me, they are an acceptance of failure, a swan cry in the face of hypercapitalism. This was our perfect future? We laugh out loud through silent GIFs.

Shey Rivera Ríos’s Fantasy Island continues at AS220 Project Space (93 Mathewson Street, Providence, RI) through June 28.

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