Do Not Research
April 23 - 26, 2022

lower_cavity is pleased to host the first IRL exhibition by Do Not Research. Described by Lolcow as a “detestable band of washed up millennial seapunks” and by Buzzfeed as “Zoomers obsessed with Mark Fisher,” DNR is a highly active online community that publishes writing, visual art, internet culture research and more. Founded in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, DNR began as a private Discord server gathered around the overlapping topics of political fragmentation, memetic propagation and the role of the internet in shaping emergent cultural and ideological trends. As social media, online aesthetics and radical politics reshape the national discourse, DNR sees a need for new institutions to lend aesthetic expertise, drive research and create context. In its first year, DNR has published 143 pieces by 110 contributors. Edited, operated and managed by co-directors Abbey Pusz and Margo Bergamini, DNR is a community, a publishing platform, and a creative think tank for the 21st century.

This exhibition brings together the work of 38 artists and community members collected from the #share-your-work channel in the DNR Discord during 2020-22. Despite their extremely online origins, all of the works shown–ranging from paintings, sculptures, photographs, anime-girl-covered 3D printed guns and instagram scrolls–are physical objects. Installed throughout a basement level located below lower_cavity’s main project space, the artworks present a variety of reoccurring themes that interact with and reinforce one another. Political diagrams, taxonomies and iconography are scattered throughout scenario planning grids of improbable and speculative futures. Cryptographic mining rigs crunch an academic syllabus of meme books while role-play games work to rekindle our political imagination.

The exhibition features works by the following:

Brandon Bandy, Leith Benkhedda, Alex Both, Annebel Breij, CCRUwU, Joshua Citarella, Blake Robbins, Gaia Del Santo, Dorian Electra, Tomi Faison, Rufinta, Rachel Jackson, Phoebe Jenkins, Jreg, Dimitri Karakostas, Filip Kostic, Matt Lyon, DJ Meisner, Grace Menninger, New Models, Alfred Muszynski, Greg Nachmanovitch, David Noel, Holly Overton, Abbey Pusz, Jak Ritger, Harris Rosenblum, Troy Scully, Erik Simkins, Society If Text Wall, Sam Stewart, Brad Troemel, Sjef Van Beers, Vitruvian Grimace, Nick Vyssotsky, and Kara Stokowski.