Grimes has a visual album with her colleague HANA, The AC!D Reign Chronicles. Henry J Darger celebrates it.
Rancid Pokémons,
by Henry J Darger
Two months ago, a Gas Pokémon appeared at the Holocaust museum. XD. Play will set you free. The post-Fordian and pertinent alternative around contemporary playfulness didn’t quite make it in Washington. As it was to be expected, the typical reaction of any sepulchral and censor organ followed, and the historic centre forbade the visitors to enjoy this summer’s juiciest frivolity.
I tend to visit our capital’s permanent collections during my holidays; it’s a ritual. Some years ago, when I still thought that culture hanging lifeless on those walls was an introspective and aesthetic trance matter, not a timing one, I used to appear in some god-forgotten museum at 3PM. On my own, yes, just in case some Giotto wanted to jump off the canvas and kiss me on the lips. However, now that I’ve managed to value more other people’s gaze than my own, I prefer wandering among crowded ruins.
This way, between museums and tourists, mobile at hand at 1PM last July, I was wondering what type of Pokémons I’d find at the Thyssen. Or what type of art those Pokémons would like, specifically. A couple of hours later and surrounded by people’s disapproving whispers, I considered the expedition a failure. Let me clarify this: I soon got tired of our Pokémons’ lame taste. These ones here, ours, are not as mischievous or imaginative as that Nazi. Iberian Pokémons are tackier, lovers of expressionist or post-expressionist figurative art, of warm colours and flat stains, those infernal beings for whom the history of art is summarised in the first decades of the 20th century. Rancid Pokémons. I found them in Schiele’s Houses on the River or in Burliuk’s Ukranian Peasant Woman. In Petchstein’s Horse Fair or behind a Fauve wall, hidden so as not to be trapped. Then I gave up due to lack of interest and low battery.
I wouldn’t like to blame these virtual creatures for the complete sensitive fiasco because part of the high expectations in the otherwise really bright augmented reality were only my own. I’m a mediocre Pokémon trainer, in the same way that I’m a mediocre intellectual, since I unfortunately lack the time and perseverance needed to give myself away to this summer’s juiciest frivolity in its intellectualised version: Pokémon Go in art.
