A Rhizome of Shiny Kardashian Arse

zip file, text files

Considerable as a volume, the first part of a family magnum opus, a rhizome of shiny Kardashian arse documents the collective Twitter activity of one of celebrities’ most dominant families. All the tweets ever made by Caitlyn, Kendall, Kylie and Kris Jenner, Khloe, Kourtney, Rob and Kim Kardashian, up until April 12th 2018, an arbitrary date, saved as an incomprehensible 113,192 text format files, organised solely through their Twitter ID numbers.

With a knowing nod towards Walter Benjamin’s famous and unfinished attempt to document the Parisian Arcades, a rhizome suggests the potential of comprehension, but in its grandeur reaches an impossibility to conceive of. Each portion of text, removed from their original context, dislocated from the subsequent likes, retweets and replies, becomes a perplexing fragment in a grand narrative that can be read but never understood.

And, as days pass the date of publication, the combined Twitter activity of the Kardashian clan moves onwards, continuously pushing the archive into the past, weighing it down with a necessity for a second volume and further attempts to ‘break the internet’.

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