Richard Grayson’s “Possessions_Inc.”

Here you will find my essay on the artist-curator Richard Grayson’s amazing and deeply worthwhile online video essay “Possessions_Inc.”, commissioned by Matt’s Gallery. Using the variably concocted esoteric mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau as a central thread, Grayson mixes his own critical and fictional texts with audio samples of TV, film, podcasts, and obscure archives to create a tentacled meditation on art objects, truth-fictions, forgeries, specters, techno-animism, perverse capitalism, and the sad loss of the Real. Appropriately, all of this audio is voiced through the morphing image of the Asmodeus demon that once stood at the door of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Rennes-le-Chateau until a young woman dressed in an Islamic chador chopped the thing’s head off with an axe in 2017. You will enjoy the essay more if you take in at least some of the individual videos, but the whole thing is worthwhile.

Matts_Gallery_Richard-Grayson_Possessions_inc_essay-2 (PDF)