Artists JON RAFMAN and FILIP KOSTIC are known for their immersive work creating dream-like virtual experiences. While Jon’s take is certainly dystopian and his work is shaped often in forms of short to long-run film edits, Filip’s work explores our constant need to escape everyday reality.
GET YOUR COPY OF DSCENE “FEVER DREAMS” ART ISSUE IN PRINT AND DIGITAL
Our initial idea was for Jon and Filip to interview themselves, yet instead of an edit we printed the full transcript of their conversation, allowing us to fully immerse ourselves in their work and discussed viewpoints. For the DSCENE Magazine’s Fever Dreams issue, Filip and Jon talked about their earliest memories, the internet’s fast pace, and Al.
Flip: Cool. Okay. So I think the issue’s called Fever Dreams? So we have to talk about dreams—fever dreams. I’ve never had a fever dream. Have you had a fever dream?
Jon: Definitely. I mean, if you—
Flip: How did that go?
Jon: Have you ever taken uh—Malaria pills?
Flip: No.
Jon: Oh, well—
Flip: Wait.
Jon: I travelled a lot to—to a lot of tropical environments; but even when I was very young because my mother took me to the craziest places. And they make you have fever dreams and they’re like one of the most unpleasant—like I hate taking Malaria pills.
Flip: What is—what is a—like the distinction?
Jon: It’s how you hallucinate like while you’re sleeping and it’s like you’re kind of in this—I mean or—you’ve never had like a really intense dream while you’ve had a terrible fever?
Flip: I mean, I used to have these— when I was a kid I would have these very, very vivid, lucid dreams.
Jon: Okay.
Flip: And then I would also get scissor lock. Where, you know, when you wake up but you’re not awake?
Jon: That—that to me is like—
Flip: A fever dream?
Jon: That’s very—I guess I don’t know what the official definition is, but yes sleep paralysis—
Flip: Yeah, yeah.
Jon: Is one of the most—I think that might be, like as a child, the most terrifying experience of that era.
Flip: I was sleeping in a crib when I had one and I remember it still.
Jon: Wow. What happened?
Flip: It’s like, I would wake up and I would open my eyes and I wouldn’t be able to move at all and I would always see these three witches around my crib.
Jon: Holy shit.
Flip: Of these three old ladies with like long noses.
Jon: One time I was in psycho analysis [laughs] and my analyst said something very funny; and it almost made sense, but seemed highly unlikely. So when I had these sleep—what do you call them? Scissor lock? I’ve never heard of that.
Flip: Yeah that’s what they—
Jon: Sleep paralysis.
Flip: Yup.
Jon: I would also hear voices really talking super-fast. [fast-forward noise] And like it felt like a—I was trapped in a vicious loop with these like screaming—
Flip: Whoa.
Jon: But hyper-speed voices.
Flip: Jesus.
Jon: And it’s like it was your parents arguing when you were in the womb. [laughs]
Flip: That’s what your psychoanalyst said? Funny. I wonder what—I wonder how they would psychoanalyze my three witches?
Jon: Yeah.
Flip: I would get—I had like five or six of those exact same ones and they were always different. And they would all just show up in different dreams of mine that I had.
Jon: Did you ever sleep walk?
Flip: Oh, I slept walk a lot—
Keep up with Filip and Jon on Instagram: @flipkostic @jonrafman
Originally published in DSCENE “Fever Dreams” Art Issue, read the whole interview in print:
