In July 2019 a new art space opened in Los Angeles. This wasn’t a neat minimal white cube for showing expensive art. At first glance one might be reminded of a vintage video store. If the space was on your radar, you would have probably noticed that it hosted multimedia events. For people who recognized the name, Everything is Terrible!, it was cause to celebrate the arrival of a new culture-jamming HQ in Los Angeles. Founded at Ohio University in 2000, the collective started off as a group of students who spent snowed-in winters trying to find the weirdest artifacts of late 20th-century culture on VHS tape. Scouring flea markets, thrift stores and eBay, they set about collecting video relics of pre-internet culture and started posting them to their website in 2007. When asked to describe a typical showing, they offer: “The shows go back and forth between heavily edited pieces to live element to both keep things moving but also to overwhelm and disorient you. Every tour is a totally new live show, but it’s safe to say there will always be a variety of 8-foot tall puppets, singing and dancing, black lights, lasers and fog.”
The thing that they are most famous for is their collection of Jerry Maguire video cassettes. When they noticed how ubiquitous these had become at any place that sold used videos, they actively started collecting them. These have been featured in a gallery installation that recreated an old video store that offered nothing but that title, and a giant VHS throne. The eventual plan is to build a pyramid in the desert out of them.
Everything is Terrible! still from “Memory Hole,” 2014.
One of their side projects, “Memory Hole,” involves the archives of a TV show that they aren’t legally allowed to name, to which people sent in their most cringe-worthy videos. Without the cute music and sound effects that the producers added “to make them funny” they become unsettling artifacts. They describe these clips as a never-ending horror film. Although they can culture jam with the best of them (Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain (1973)) collaged out of dog clips), they are usually quite effective at sharing clips deadpan without comment. After all, what can you add to gems like Cat Massaging, Singing Babies and a yellow pedophile-hunting dinosaur?
Recently Hollywood took notice of their work when assembling the ill-fated Quibi service. Not only did Quibi appropriate the name “Memory Hole,” but they copied the EIT! graphic design. While their initial reaction was to shrug it off as more Hollywood malfeasance, furious fans started sending them Quibi clips that looked exactly like EIT! videos. They are now collecting Quibi swag in earnest, like those Jerry Maguire videos. When queried about what they’d do if a museum came calling, they pointed to their recent inclusion in The Meow Wolf project in Denver, where they control every aspect of a large space, telling a story throughout with animatronics, puppets, architecture, art, music, video games, etc. In the age of amusement park-style museum attractions, they’re ready for their close-up.
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