Selected Essays and Articles:
2009
Reported feature/critical essay on growing sightings of the giant squid (Architeuthis dux), the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis), and the animals' roles as cultural icons in the pop consciousness, Discover magazine. (NOTE: Forthcoming.)
"Solar Flare: Sun Ra's album covers were wild, inspired, and a universe away from Blue Note," feature on the graphic-design sensibility of the jazz composer Sun Ra, Print, June 2009, pps. 86-93.
"
Love in the Time of Swine Flu: David Lida's Affair with Mexico City," feature article on David Lida, author of
First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century,
The Brooklyn Rail, June 2009.
"
Miracles of Life: J.G. Ballard's Pre-posthumous Memoir: A surreal sort of life," essay on J.G. Ballard, pegged on his autobiography
Miracles of Life,
The L.A. Weekly, February 10, 2009.
"Vector Block on Telecoms Avenue," essay on/inteview with Critical Art Ensemble, Proud to be Flesh: a Mute Magazine Anthology, ed. Pauline van Mourik Broekman and Simon Worthington, (New York: Autonomedia, 2009).
"Jesus is Just Alright," in Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith, ed. Jeff Sharlet, Peter Manseau, and Meera Subramanian (Beacon Press), anthology of writings on religion from the webzine Killing the Buddha.
2008
"Cowgirls and Werebabes: When Porn Leaps the Species Barrier," in Pr0nnovation? Pornography and Technological Innovation, ed. Johannes Grenzfurthner, Guenther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry (San Francisco: RE/Search Publications, spring 2009), anthology of papers from the 2007 Arse Elektronika conference in San Francisco.
2007.
"The Dismemberment of Things Past," essay on the cultural politics of nostalgia, in Cabinet magazine conference anthology (untitled, as of this writing), ed. Pip Day (Mexico City: Museo Tamayo/Aldabaarte, 2007).
"Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0," essay on African-American technoculture, in Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction's Newest New Wave Trajectory, ed. Marleen Barr (Ohio State University Press).
"
Wimps, Wussies, and W.: How Americans' infatuation with masculinity has perilous consequences," op-ed,
The Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2007. (Note: This one really grew legs. The left/liberal website
AlterNet ran an extended version of this essay, and I discussed my article with Fox commentators Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson on their respective radio shows.)
"
Idol slayer? Can one man topple an empire?," brief thoughts contributed to an
online roundtable on
American Idol,
Salon.com, April 4, 2007.
"Armies of the Night: Satan's Fetus Stalks the Suburbs," essay about the Jerusalem Cricket as myth and symbol in the "Insects" issue of Cabinet magazine, issue 25, pps. 68-74.
"Paradise Lust: Pornotopia Meets the Culture Wars," essay on the cultural politics of online sexual subcultures, and "Naked Lunch: Talking Realcore with Sergio Messina," interview about "realcore" amateur porn phenomenon with online sexology researcher Sergio Messina, in C'Lick Me: A Netporn Reader, ed. Katrien Jacobs, Matteo Pasquinelli, and Marije Janssen (Amsterdam: The Institute of Network Culture).
"Word Salad Surgery: Surrealist Spam, Deconstructed," published in Spanish and English in the Colombian magazine
El Niuton magazine.
"The
Being John Malkovich Syndrome," essay on blogging, published in Portuguese in the Brazilian magazine
Revista Cult, June 2007.
"Fatiga de Batalha," revised and expanded version of essay on camo chic, published in Portuguese in the Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora, February 17, 2007.
"
The Devil Wears Camo---or Does He? Cultural Confusion Over a Military Motif," revised and expanded version of
ID essay "Pattern Recognition,"
Utne Reader, March-April 2007, pps. 38-39.
2006:
"Q&A: Cultural anthropologists Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen on the history of stereotyping," interview, ID magazine, December 2006, pps. 32-33.
"'Always Crashing in the Same Car': A Head-On Collision with the Technosphere," essay on the cyborgian psychology of car and driver, in Against Automobility (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing/Sociological Review), pps. 223-239.
"
Ancient Astronauts and Forgotten Dreams: A Requiem for the Space Age," reprint of extensive excerpt from "In Search of Ancient Astronauts: A Requiem for the Space Age" (
Cabinet magazine) in
Utne Reader, November-December 2006, pps. 41-43. Cover story.
"Struck By Noetic Lightning,"
essay on/interview with digital-culture philosopher Terence McKenna, and "
Postfuture Shock," interview with me, in
Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes (Well-Read Bear/Front Wheel Drive magazine), ed. Roy Christopher.
"Bound for Glory: Advances in screen-based reading may make the book as we know it extinct. Mark Dery wonders what we'll lose when all that paper melts into zeroes and ones." Essay on the death of the print medium, Print magazine, Jul/Aug 2006, pps. 44-49.
"
The Great Scapegoat: Paris may be burning, but Le Corbusier didn't light the match," essay on modernist master-planned housing in France and its role in the revolt of the immigrant underclass,
ID magazine, June 2006, p. 28.
"A Cartoonist in Despair? Now That's Funny," feature on underground cartoonist Mark Newgarden, The New York Times, "Styles" section, March 19, 2006.
2005:
"Scary Cute," feature on the designer toy movement's roots in Japanese aesthetics, in I.D., November 2005, Vol. 52, Issue 7.
"Brown Power: The Mass-Marketed 'Cholo' Style is Only a Fragment of an Influential Collage of Mexican-American Symbolism and Pop-Culture Design," article on Mexican-American design culture, in Print magazine, Sept/Oct 2005, pps. 94-101.
"In Search of Ancient Astronauts: A Requiem for the Space Age," essay on growing up as the son of an aeronautics worker, in the aerospace culture of Southern California in the '70s, in Cabinet, issue 18, pps. 35-39.
"Stranger in a Strange Land: How East Coast Native and Pop-Culture Guru Mark Dery Became a Chula Vista Homeboy," cover story in San Diego CityBeat, June 1, 2005, by Kelly Davis. Brief interview/profile and lengthy excerpt from my essay "Loving the Alien: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Become Californian."
"Loving the Alien: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Become Californian," essay on Southern Californian culture in the 1970s, in Sunshine/Noir: Writing From San Diego And Tijuana, ed. Jim Miller (San Diego: CityWorks Press, 2005).
"Trumpery: Why should The Donald be Fired? Look up.," I.D., May 2005, p. 30.
"The Mechanical Bridegroom Stripped Bare: A Catechism of McLuhanism for Unbelievers," essay on the religious subtext of Marshall McLuhan's theories of media, in The Legacy of McLuhan, ed. Lance Strate and Edward Wachtel (Hampton Press, 2005), pps. 95-106.
"Paradise Lust," an essay on the sexual experimentation of the '70s and the current backlash against freedom of sexual expression, in Vogue Hommes, spring/summer '05, pps. 244-7.
2004:
"Dead Seas," essay on the psychological effects of landscape (specifically, the "psychogeology" of Southern California), Cabinet magazine, issue 16, Winter 2004, pps. 57-63.
"Killing Time" and "Paradise Recycled," essays on the postmodern sense of time and obsolete utopias, respectively, in Ciberliteratura, a volume in the Ciberscopio anthology (Portugal: Ariadne Editora, 2004), which includes seven digital culture-related titles. Distributed in Portugal.
"Axles of Evil," essay on the relationship between America's love affair with SUVs and its oil-driven foreign policy, Vogues Hommes, fall/winter 04-05, pps. 148-9.
"Design Beyond Reach: Why is the promise of well-wrought, affordable products still mostly hype?," I.D., September/October 2004, p. 34.
"The Sex of Joy," social history and cultural critique of illustrations in sex manuals, Print, July/August, pps. 78-81.
"Blinded by the Light: Religion, California style," Vogues Hommes, spring-summer 2004, pps. 230-233.
"A Terrible Beauty: Does our humanity falter if we acknowledge an esthetic gratification in the visual facade of tragedy?," essay on the moral questions raised by aesthetic appreciation of images of tragedy and catastrophe, Print, January/February 2004.
2003:
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Severed Head,"
Cabinet, essay on the symbolism and cultural history of the severed head, spring 2003.
"The Future We Deserve," Dwell, profile of sci-fi novelist and design theorist Bruice Sterling, Nov/Dec 2003, p. 130.
"Distress Signal: Mark Dery on Recent Ruins," Bookforum, Winter 2003, p. 31.
"Streaming Media: Mark Dery on futuristic fetish sites---money shots meet The Matrix," Nerve.com, August 11.
"Goodbye, Cruel Words," Bookforum, essay on the suicide note as literature, Summer 2003, p. 56.
"Public Enemy: Confrontation," in That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal (Routledge).
"Nothing Obsolesces Like the Future," Dwell, May 2003, pps. 102-106.
"The Mother of All Bodice Rippers: Mark Dery on Saddam Hussein, romance novelist," Bookforum, Spring 2003, p. 56.
"Fascinating Fascism 2.0," Vogues Hommes International, essay on pop culture's obsession with the Third Reich, spring/summer 03, pps. 252-255.
"Memories of the Future: Excavating the Jet Age at the TWA Terminal," from the anthology
Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History, ed. Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson, Alessio Cavallaro (Sydney, Australia/Boston, MA: Power Publications, University of Sydney/ MIT Press).
2002:
"Mind Games," Print magazine, 2002 LVI:III, pps. 70-75. Critique/profile of the webdesign team Hi-Res!
"Blunt Instrument," BookForum, Winter 2002, p. 56. Invisible Lit column on the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Index) as literature.
"Gray Matter," essay on the New York Academy of Medicine Library, in the Village Voice Literary Supplement, Fall 2002, p. 116.
"Object Relations," essay on the auction catalogue as cultural artifact, in Bookforum, Fall 2002, p. 52.
"Tripe Soup for the Soul," Bookforum, essay on the Daily Affirmation as a literary form, Summer 2002.
"The Sunshine Syndrome: Portrait of the Artist as a Jaundiced Don Diego," in Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation From People Who Know a Thing or Two, ed. James L. Harmon (Simon & Schuster, 2002), pps. 84-91.
"Robocopulation: Sex Times Technology Equals the Future," in Cyber Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era, ed. Neil Spiller (Phaidon, 2002), pps. 274-279.
"Lone Gunmen," Bookforum, Spring 2002, p. 52. "Invisible Lit" column on investigative-reporting website, TheSmokingGun.com, and its founders' obsession with government documents and criminal records.
"Curvature of the Spline: Trends in Biomorphic Design," I.D., April 2002, p. 54.
2001:
"Memo Mori," NOEMA, Winter 2001.
"The Necro Files: Apocalypse Culture Falls Off the Edge," in War of the Words: 20 Years of Writing on Contemporary Literature, ed. Joy Press (Three Rivers Press), pps. 276-78. Essay on Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey and the death of alt.culture.
Review of Selling Ben Cheever: Back to Square One in a Service Economy, by Ben Cheever, Wired, November 2001, p. 206.
"The Guru of Grunge," I.D., October 2001, p. 26. Brief article on punk graphic designer Art Chantry.
"The Possessed," Washington Post Book World, September 16, 2001, pps. 6-7. Review of American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty, by Michael W. Cuneo.
"Paper Trail," Bookforum, Fall 2001, pps. 50-52. Essay on information anxiety.
"Give Us This Day Our Daily Read: Infomaniac Mark Dery mourns his addiction to The New York Times," Mute, July 2001, Issue 20, p. 23.
"The Blob That Ate Design," Interiors, June 2001, p. 71. Column. Essay on the "blobject" aesthetic in industrial design.
"Exquisite Corpses," Bookforum, Summer 2001, p. 5.
Review of Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age, Wired, May 2001, p. 169.
"Fleshed Out," Village Voice, April 10, 2001, p. 123.
"Gorilla Warfare," Village Voice, March 13, 2001, p. 119.
Ancient History (pre-2001):
"The Merry Pranksters And the Art of the Hoax," The New York Times, December 23, 1990. The first major feature in a national publication on "culture jamming."
"Wild Nature (The Unabomber Meets the Digerati)," early essay version of what would later become a chapter in
The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium.
Hacking Barbie's Voice Box: "Vengeance is Mine!" Originally published in
New Media magazine, "Technoculture" column, May 1994.
Slashing the Borg: Resistance is Fertile. (An essay on
Star Trek porn, textual poaching, and the closeted desires of the leather-bound Borg, originally published in the Australian cyberzine
21.C.)
"Wired Unplugged," originally published in
Educom Review, Volume 30, Number 3, 1995.
Marshall McLuhan: The Medium's Messenger . Originally published in
Educom Review; later extensively revised and vastly expanded for
The Legacy of McLuhan, an academic anthology edited by Lance Strate.
Errata:
A heap of steaming
Suck columns. (Scroll past bio blurb; links at bottom of page.) If only that heartwarmingly snarky webzine were still around...
A
slew of articles for the late, lamented webzine,
GettingIt.
Just what the world's been waiting for: An even
more thorough accounting of my
Village Voice articles. Here's
my review of
Advertising Today by Warren Berger. Here's my article,
Gray Matter," about the New York Academy of Medicine Library. Here's
"Fleshed Out," about Stephen T. Asma's
Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads. Here's
"Gorilla Warfare," about pop primatology and cognitive ethology. And "
Fear and Loathing," about paleoconservative cartoonist Jack T. Chick, well-known on the cultural fringe for his rabidly homophobic, anti-Catholic tracts. And "
The Body Chop," a review of
The Quick and the Dead, about artists and anatomy. Here's
"The Necro Files," my excoriating essay on
Apocalypse Culture editor and Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey, "the Ron Popeil of fusion paranoia, pop Satanism, bad art, cannibal killers, Jews for Hitler, and fecal black magic (make that brown magic)." And here's
"Brain Food," my VLS cover story on Hannibal Lecter as cultural icon, pegged on the novel
Hannibal (which sucked and blew. But you knew that).
Selected Interviews:
"Virtual Reality Bites Back," an interview with Julian Dibbell for
The Atlantic Online, 1/28/99. (Site requires registration.)
Out of Control (a "trialogue" with Deleuzean philosopher Manuel De Landa and machine artist Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories, originally published---and hamfistedly edited---by
Wired; this version includes a clunky opening graph, grafted onto the piece without my consent)
Lectures:
"Memories of the Future," a March 1, 2001 lecture at Sandy Stone's ACT Lab, at UT Austin, followed by a playfully combative Q&A. (
Is anything more mortifying than watching yourself on video?)
Extempore remarks at the School of Visual Arts, New York City, spring 2002. A, er, highly discursive attempt to address the assigned topic "cyborgs and surrealism" in a largely improvised talk, riffing on
Lancelot Link,
Secret Chimp,
The Island of Doctor Moreau,
Frankenstein, the genetic art of Eduardo Kac, and "blobject" design. Caveat lector. (Note: Page may appear to be blank, in certain browsers. If it does, try highlighting entire page by clicking "SELECT ALL" on your browser's drop-down "EDIT" menu.)
