VILLÁR ROJAS, Adrian
The End of Imagination

Argentinian artist Adrian Villár Rojas’s artist’s book The End of Imagination, a dystopian graphic novel, weaves together three stories: The Last American, a futuristic novel by John Ames Mitchell from 1889; “The Last Joke on Earth,” an essay about the end of the world that Rojas himself wrote in 2011; and images taken from the 1928 animated short Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse film to be set to music. This montage of literature and cartoon pictures takes readers on a journey in the company of a hand-drawn Mickey Mouse, navigating the margins of a photocopied edition of The Last American, while the story of the last humans on earth unfolds.

The Last American and Steamboat Willie have something in common: both are out of copyright, which means that they have become a commodity. The artist’s book thus also examines how we can continue working with the wealth of material that has already been produced.

[publisher's note]

Published by Spector Books, 2024
Monographs