After the Party

Life is unbearable—
they say the eyes are windows to the soul,
but what of the man with no eyes?
What of the erased,
the ones whom even memory denies?

Better to vanish
than to have never begun.
When the map folds against you,
and the path dissolves in your hands,
they say, look on the bright side—
but even brightness burns.

All this will end.
That’s the promise and the curse.
We aren’t here for long—
thankfully.

So what does it matter?

For now, I just sit.
Hoping.
Waiting.
Watching.
As so many have, in silence,
through centuries of sameness,
pondering eternity—
a word too large
for such a small life.

The keys on my laptop
tick like a tired clock,
each letter a coffin nail
in the casket of now.

Who will remember us?
No one.
You and me,
we’ll fade like fog on glass.
We’ll echo
for a moment—
then go still.

Life is just
brief jolts of joy
lost between
hours of slow torment.

It ends like the party does—
the lights flicker on,
the laughter gone,
everyone gone.

And you are left
with the floor littered,
the silence heavy,
and only yourself
to clean it up.

Expired Film

I found 3 rolls of exposed film from about 10 years ago in my storage room a few weeks ago. This was one of the images on the film. You never know what you get with expired film.

Drowning in Sameness: The Cliché Crisis of Contemporary Art

In graduate school, one mantra was drilled into us over and over: avoid cliché at all costs. It was practically gospel. Any hint of predictability—whether in subject, form, or execution—was to be rooted out and replaced with something authentic, something bold, something that hadn’t been said a thousand times before.

And yet, when I look around at much of the contemporary art world today, all I see is cliché.

The same themes appear again and again—identity, trauma, capitalism, climate anxiety. Important subjects, no doubt, but treated in ways that often feel safe, predictable, and flat. There’s a checklist quality to it, as if the work were designed more for grant applications and curatorial approval than for artistic risk or revelation.

Art is supposed to provoke, to awaken. But too much of what I see merely confirms. It reflects the viewer’s values back at them without asking anything in return. It’s comfortable. And in that comfort, something essential gets lost.

We were taught to seek our own voice—but the art world now feels like it speaks in a single dialect. Walk through a major gallery, scroll through the social media feeds of rising artists, and it all starts to blur. Neon signs with clever phrases. Ironic gestures involving fast food. Politically charged performance lectures. It’s as if everyone’s pulling from the same playbook.

Social media, of course, accelerates the problem. Platforms like Instagram reward the polished, the palatable, the easy-to-understand. But art isn’t supposed to be easy. It should take time to digest. It should resist quick meaning. It should live with you—and maybe even bother you.

What’s gone missing is the avant-garde spirit. There’s no Pollock flinging paint in defiance of control. No Duchamp turning a urinal into a philosophical time bomb. No Warhol turning banality into commentary. Today, we mistake visibility for relevance. We reward familiarity over friction.

There are still powerful, original voices out there. But they’re often drowned in a sea of sameness—an ocean of work that feels algorithmic, derivative, and devoid of genuine risk.

And maybe that’s the real tragedy: not that the art is bad, but that it’s afraid. Afraid to be misunderstood. Afraid to offend. Afraid to fail. In our attempt to make art that’s socially conscious and institutionally acceptable, we’ve created a culture where imitation is safer than invention.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We need to return to that lesson from graduate school—not just as a rule, but as a rallying cry. Avoid cliché. Seek truth. Create something that doesn’t already exist.

Art isn’t here to soothe us. It’s here to stir us. ~John Kobeck

Life Was Better Before Tinder: How the 1990s Marked the End of Real Culture

“We didn’t know it at the time, but the ‘90s were the last real decade.”

We often speak about technological progress as if it’s synonymous with cultural progress. But what if the opposite is true? What if, in our pursuit of speed, convenience, and connectivity, we lost something vital — something human?

This question haunts many of us who came of age in the 1990s — a decade that now feels like the closing chapter of an analog civilization. Before Tinder. Before cancel culture. Before everyone became a “content creator.” Back when culture was still lived, not downloaded.

Television Had Soul (and Balls)

In the ‘90s, television didn’t apologize. Seinfeld made fun of everything — and everyone. The Jamie Kennedy Experiment brought public prank culture into the mainstream. These shows weren’t afraid of controversy; they relied on it. The goal wasn’t safety. It was entertainment.

Compare that to today’s media landscape, where writers must self-censor or risk being deplatformed. There is no risk, no edge — only curated inoffensiveness. Where once humor subverted, now it conforms.

Music Was a Movement, Not a Market

Bands like Oasis weren’t just musicians. They were cultural agents, wearing the Union Jack with boldness and pride. They weren’t afraid to express identity — not as a marketing ploy, but as a statement of being. Today, similar acts might be branded nationalist or divisive.

Music now feels sterile. Optimized. Algorithmic. Designed not to challenge, but to trend. What once came from the gut now comes from analytics.

Photography Was Art, Not Content

Before smartphones, photography demanded intentionality. You loaded film. You chose your shot. You waited. There was patience and failure — and in that, craft. As Duane Michals famously said, “I’m not interested in shooting new things — I’m interested in seeing things new.”

Today, photography has become visual clutter. Everyone is a “photographer.” Which, in a paradox of abundance, means no one is. When every moment is documented, none are remembered.

The Algorithm Ate Our Culture

It’s tempting to blame smartphones alone, but they are only the vessel. The real culprit is the algorithmic worldview. That is, a culture shaped by metrics, not meaning. We consume what’s recommended, not what we need. We say what will get likes, not what we believe.

Even love isn’t immune. Apps like Tinder have turned human intimacy into a gamified economy of swipes, matches, and dopamine loops. Dating once required courage — now it requires bandwidth.

Cancel Culture and the End of Risk

Freedom of expression once meant embracing the uncomfortable. Today, discomfort itself is taboo. Creativity has become risk-managed. The arts — once the last bastion of intellectual rebellion — are now platforms for moral performance.

The result? A culture afraid of itself.

What the 1990s Taught Us

The 1990s weren’t perfect, but they were real. You had to call someone and talk. You had to carry a camera and wait. You had to write with a pen, not your thumbs. Life demanded participation — not just consumption.

Most importantly, culture was lived, not performed.

Conclusion: What Comes Next?

We can't go back — nor should we pretend that every part of the past was golden. But we can resist the flattening of human experience by remembering how it felt to live without constant surveillance, metrics, and optimization.

Real life is imperfect, analog, risky, unfiltered — and worth preserving.

So maybe the question isn’t “What happened to culture?”

Maybe it’s “Are we brave enough to make it human again? ~John Kobeck 2025

The Beautiful Ache: How Depression Fuels Creative Genius (if it doesn't kill us).

There’s a long-standing myth that madness and genius are bedfellows—and like most myths, it’s rooted in truth. For centuries, artists, poets, musicians, and writers have transformed their pain into timeless work. Depression, often viewed solely as a debilitating force, has also been the engine behind some of the most powerful creative expressions the world has ever seen.

Take Vincent van Gogh, who painted The Starry Night while confined in a mental asylum. His letters reveal a man tormented by darkness but obsessed with capturing light—his depression didn’t dim his creativity; it sharpened it, gave it urgency.

Sylvia Plath, whose poetry sliced through the mundane into the raw marrow of being, wrote Ariel in the throes of despair. Her verses are not just poems, but emotional x-rays, revealing the invisible fractures of the soul. Like Plath, Virginia Woolf wove her mental struggles into her fiction, crafting fluid, stream-of-consciousness prose that mirrored the fragmentation she felt within.

In music, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana turned his anguish into grunge anthems that defined a generation. His lyrics were not simply moody; they were honest, guttural, and laced with longing for relief. Amy Winehouse poured heartbreak and self-destruction into every smoky note she sang, creating soul music that was as beautiful as it was tragic.

Even sculptors like Camille Claudel, often overshadowed by Rodin, channeled her anguish into stone and bronze, creating hauntingly expressive works that seemed to bleed emotion.

So what is it about depression that seems to unlock the creative mind?

Depression often forces introspection—an unflinching gaze inward. It isolates, slows time, warps perception. While that may sound like a prison, for artists, it becomes a crucible. Creativity can be the only way out—a way to make sense of pain, or at least give it form. Art becomes not just an act of expression, but of survival.

Of course, not every artist is depressed, and not everyone who suffers from depression becomes an artist. But when the two meet, something potent often emerges: art that doesn’t just entertain, but connects. It says, “You’re not alone in this ache.” And that is a gift—both to the creator and to the audience.

Today, mental health is being discussed more openly than ever. That’s a good thing. But as we push for healing and light, let’s not forget the strange alchemy of shadow—the art it has given us, and the humanity it continues to reveal.

Fighting Monsters: AI, Art, and the Death of the Human Voice

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster."
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

In one sharp sentence, Nietzsche warns us of the moral peril in battling darkness: in fighting monsters, we may become monstrous ourselves. This quote, born of 19th-century philosophy, now pulses with eerie relevance in the 21st century — particularly in the world of contemporary art, where the latest “monster” is artificial intelligence.

AI, once a tool, is becoming the artist. It paints, it composes, it writes, and it does so at lightning speed. The same technology that was meant to assist creativity now threatens to replace it. And in our effort to embrace, regulate, or compete with this machine intelligence, many artists — institutions even — are beginning to mirror the very inhuman logic and aesthetics they claim to resist.

The Disappearing Artist

Art, in its purest form, is human friction made visible. It's the sweat, the struggle, the impulse behind the brushstroke or lyric. But increasingly, galleries and collectors are turning their attention to AI-generated works — images crafted without biography, emotion, or risk. These pieces are applauded for their technical brilliance, but they arrive stripped of humanity. There is no backstory, no flawed creator, no lived experience.

This shift reflects a growing cultural hunger for novelty over meaning. But what happens when the soul of art is traded for the spectacle of synthetic perfection?

Nietzsche's warning echoes here: by embracing AI as the new creative force, we risk making the art world a mirror of the machine — cold, calculated, efficient, but soulless.

The Aesthetic of the Algorithm

We are witnessing the rise of what might be called algorithmic taste. Images that succeed are those that "perform" well — optimized for clicks, engagement, and virality. This is not art that challenges or endures. It's art that pleases. AI understands this perfectly. It scrapes billions of data points and serves up precisely what the crowd wants. It is the ultimate populist — and the ultimate panderer.

Meanwhile, the contemporary artist, caught in this digital tide, often finds themselves mimicking machine aesthetics to stay relevant. Glitch art, AI collaborations, neural-filtered portraits — these aren't just trends, they’re symptoms. In fighting to be seen in an algorithmic age, artists are becoming what the algorithm wants them to be.

Again: Nietzsche's monster.

Are Katy Perry and Taylor Swift Already AI?

In a sense, they are. Not in the literal, science-fiction sense — they are living, breathing women — but in their presentation and output, they often feel algorithmically assembled.

Every lyric, every beat drop, every visual is perfectly tuned to the market. These artists operate less like musicians and more like highly branded content machines. The songs feel processed. The personas feel manufactured. Even the “raw” or “confessional” moments often carry the sheen of calculated virality.

Taylor Swift’s every heartbreak is a product cycle. Katy Perry’s aesthetic reinventions echo updates, not evolution. It’s not that they aren’t talented — it’s that the system they inhabit has stripped away spontaneity. In short: they feel AI-generated because they’ve learned to perform for an algorithm.

When pop stars become predictable products, when their music feels like output from a marketing prompt — can we even call it art anymore? Or is it just content?

Nietzsche again: in fighting for fame in a world ruled by metrics, they’ve become the monster the system demanded — a reflection of the algorithm, flawless but hollow.

The Vanishing Avant-Garde

Historically, great art movements — Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art — arose in defiance. They were reactions to culture, politics, war, and technology. They had teeth. But where is the avant-garde today?

Ironically, it might lie in the analog. In the defiant return to slowness, to craftsmanship, to imperfection. The future avant-garde may be the artist who refuses AI. Who writes poetry by hand. Who paints without prompts. Who photographs using film. Who dares to be unfashionable.

Because if AI art is the new monster, then human imperfection may be our last rebellion.

Conclusion: Beware the Mirror

Nietzsche wasn’t warning us simply about monsters. He was warning us about mirrors — about how, in trying to defeat a threat, we can absorb its nature.

Artists and institutions must ask: are we creating, or are we mimicking the machine? Are we offering truth, or are we just optimizing? In this new battlefield of creativity, we should remember what made art valuable in the first place — the friction of flesh, the unpredictable mind, the human stain.

Otherwise, we’ll win the fight with the monster — but lose the soul of art in the process. ~John Kobeck

Welcome to the Age of Filters: Sterility, and the Death of Meaning in Contemporary Art

There was a time—not that long ago—when music had guts. It had soul. It had something to say. The 1990s may have been the last great decade for music. Oasis wasn’t just a band, it was a mood, a movement, a shot of testosterone in a world that still knew how to roar. I used to spend hours in the darkroom with nothing but chemicals, light, and the Gallagher brothers blaring through the speakers—defiant, loud, masculine. Music had an edge. It had meaning. It was art.

Now? Now we have Taylor Swift.

What happened?

We’re living through a period of cultural blandness—lower testosterone, soft edges, safe spaces, and safe sounds. Today artists are afraid to offend people. Today’s popular music—Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish—is slickly produced, sonically bland, and emotionally neutered. The lyrics are hollow, repetitive, and soulless. There’s no poetry, no message, no anger, no rebellion. Just Instagram captions set to music. Compare that to Bob Dylan, whose lyrics are poetry. Or Warhol’s Velvet Underground—gritty, experimental, dangerous.

This isn't about nostalgia. It’s about recognizing how the soul of a culture is reflected in its sound. Art and music have always walked hand in hand. You can’t talk about the visual avant-garde of the 60s without also hearing the hum of Dylan’s harmonica or the scream of a Lou Reed guitar riff in the background. You can't separate punk rock from the DIY zines and Xeroxed art of the late 70s and 80s. And you can’t talk about the swagger of the 90s without the Union Jack and a Britpop anthem.

Since then, both music and art have spiraled into an abyss of banality. By 2010, it felt like the final nails were hammered into the coffin. We’ve traded movements for moments, legacy for likes. We’re now in the TikTok era, where songs are written to trend in 15-second bursts. People go to concerts not to listen, but to record them on smart phones. We’ve replaced experience with selfies. Nobody watches with their eyes anymore. They watch through a screen they paid a thousand dollars to carry in their pockets.

I tried to get tickets to the Oasis reunion this summer—six hours in a Ticketmaster queue, gone in a blink. Sold out across North America. And why wouldn’t it be? Even after decades, people are still hungry for something real. Something with noise and nerve. That says a lot.

Culture is a mirror, and right now we don’t like what we see. We’re living in the age of filters, where authenticity is replaced by algorithms. Where books gather dust, and deep thinkers are outcasts. There are still talented artists out there—no doubt—but they’re islands in a vast, distracted sea. Today much of the focus in art are aesthetics and cliche. There is no movement, no direction, no Warhol or Pollock to lead the charge.

We are drifting.

Art, whether painting, sculpture, photography, or music, once shaped and defined its time. Now it struggles to matter. We are culturally illiterate, scrolling and swiping past meaning in favor of dopamine.

And still, somewhere in the background, Oasis plays.

~ John Kobeck 2025