Aesthetics for Forgetting: A Thesis by Keaton Fox

By Keaton Fox, Caroline Castro and Renee Silva

"Keaton Fox’s thesis, Aesthetics for Forgetting, is an anthropologic fever dream into the psyche of gaslighting. Keaton’s dive into perceptions in media and memory crosses academia with lived experience via personal artifact, current events, and the narratives of dreams.

Aesthetics for Forgetting presents as a mind map of a collection of data, similarly to the way we may store knowledge in our minds. Tangled, coming from as many different places as it is going, Fox is giving us a voyeuristic tour of her thoughts and creative process. As you read, cadence comes as threads repeat, tie, and web a bigger, poetic picture.

Written in the second person, the thesis is but a monologue. She is writing to herself in affirmation so she won’t forget."

Description by Renee Silva

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9781304824080

Book preview

AT FIRST

We accept the reality with which we are presented.

-Christof from The Truman Show

DREAMS

01.01.2021

Dead lions on beaches.

01.04.2021

She asks you to accompany her on a bender after the love of her life dies. You’ re in cars that she keeps driving too fast amidst a variety of other normal activities that turn dangerous because she, subconsciously, is driving you both towards death. You would be afraid but it’s all too romantic to put to a halt.

09.10.2021

You’re conducting an underwater ballet.

08.07.20??

Woman in Seaside buys two killer whales to put in her bed so that she and husband will have better sex life.

JOURNAL

11.02.2021

The word manipulation is lacking in synonyms.

This is no coincidence.

The word relies on its ability to be unseen.

The more synonyms, the more words, the more visibility. If we know what it is without knowing how to define it, we don’t know what it is.

Antonyms offer a more productive yet equally eerie understanding of the term. With words like benevolence, charity, humanity, altruism, generosity, goodness, and philanthropy-it is easier to define what manipulation is not. And again, this cannot be coincidental. Because one of the standard manipulation tactics is to point out what it is not before the manipulated can come to that conclusion on their own. This move is especially prevalent in the history of cult-like productions.

Your sister was once trapped within a pyramid scheme. One in which they repeatedly told her that the scam was, of course, anything but that. Prepping her for when family and friends would inevitably ask that difficult question. Not having a word to define what it exactly was but only what it definitely was not. Here we return to the antonym which still somehow ties words like humanity and altruism to the horrors of ill-willed exploitation.

Even in opposition, these words appear in line with one another. And that visualization rings as a cause for concern.

Because manipulators prey on perception.

Hunting down clarity and replacing it with endless loops of confusion too exhausting to parse through-this is how the trap manifests.

Not on the uneducated or the ill-equipped but through those that value open mindedness and curiosity. Utilizing the innate reaction most have to someone who speaks chaos with confidence-with feelings of subordination, stupidity, curiosity again, and awe. Because if what they are saying is incomprehensible, it must be you that is in the wrong.

This trend is also present in the cult of academia and is one you fall for almost every time.

imgp1

You were shown the video of your birth when you were five years old, and have been obsessed with this Hi8 video tape ever since.

AT FIRST

At first, it served as a time-traveling tool. The surrealness of seeing the beginning of one’s emergence into the world unlocked something pivotal within. It manifested a yearning and a longing and a searching for something...not yet known.

At first, this desire was linked with the traditional sense of nostalgia that media representation seemed to offer. The ability to see a moment one could not recall provided all the things that excite the senses. It was eerie, it was exhilarating, and it was malleable.

Being able to fast forward and rewind time gave you, as it gives all humans, an illusory power that tends to shift from wonder to play to control, and you couldn’t get enough of this newfound potential.

This portal to the past was enticing, and you only fell deeper into its time-based trap...

imgp2

...At first, it was endearing, as most home videos tend to be.

Rarely showing the hardships, these moving images offered pixels of warmth through birthday candles, holiday lights, and other luminous cliches of familial togetherness.

But the more you watched, the more you uncovered.

imgp3

Misunderstanding is what drives the comedy of The Truman Show.

- From The Truman Show: Orthography as a Deep Play Model of Gentrification

THE SHIFT

It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green

-Kermit the Frog

"One online joke goes:

‘Meng Po ladled a spoonful of soup, tasted it and smiled with satisfaction...

Meng Po ladled a spoonful of soup, tasted it and smiled with satisfaction...

Meng Po ladled a spoonful of soup, tasted it and smiled with satisfaction...

Meng Po ladled a spoonful of soup, tasted it and smiled with