Franz Kafka - Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible, then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres.

Fake Barn Country

8 May to 6 July 2025

https://ravenrow.org/exhibitions/fake-barn-country

Organised by Ruth Angel Edwards, Lawrence Leaman and Oliver Williams.

Ezra Marcus: “You know, I hate horror movies. I can’t watch them. I’m afraid of them. But when it comes to this stuff in real life, I just find it so compelling. It’s like it breaks through to this other level of reality that makes me feel super alive, just thinking about this sick, nasty stuff. It cuts against the feeling that life is boring. The feeling that our society has become this deadened, monotonous, social-media-regulated, beige, Sweetgreen purgatory. It’s like, ‘No, there’s still some freaks out there, and they’re getting down and dirty.’ It makes me feel excited, even though the behavior is reprehensible.”

“Bohemias. Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the two previous centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternate societal strategies. Each one would have a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression, a substance or substances of choice, and a set of sexual values at odds with those of the culture at large. And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associated. But they became extinct.” “Extinct?” “We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters. They went the way of geography in general.”

“I think we really do have too much surveillance and taste awareness in New York for novelty to emerge. And I think the Bay Area gives you a lot more breathing room. In New York it’s so much more mediated, and at the same time hyper-social, which I love, but I think it’s hard for people to escape the rat-race feeling and come up with something exciting. 

“Whereas, whenever I’m home in the East Bay and I go for a hike or something, I feel like Kanye. I feel, like, psychotically, manically up. Like I have actually good ideas. I can embody that mindset of, ‘Wow — I just wanna get in the lab and do something.’”