Abstract

This thesis investigates the anxiety-filled artwork Poor Magic (2017) by the Montréal-based artist Jon Rafman, as presented at the National Gallery for the Sobey Art Award exhibition. Rather than understanding Rafman’s artwork within its contemporary artistic context, this thesis instead situates Poor Magic in a constellation of philosophical concepts and considerations. Interested in the intricate ramifications of the anxiety produced by the artwork, the thesis begins by unveiling the anxiety-inducing elusiveness of death and the equally anxiety producing uncontrollability of technology – not only in the way Rafman uses them, but in their ontological structures. The focus then shifts around the outcomes of Poor Magic. Read from the standpoint of presentism, Poor Magic has the capacity to rescue us into the emergency of short-termism, rather than from it – here relying on contemporary continental philosopher Santiago Zabala’s theory. By putting forth the shortcomings of presentism and of commonly used coping mechanisms, Poor Magic makes us question and face up to the temporal emergency we are currently in.