Jak Ritger is an artist, writer, and activist based in Boston, Massachusetts. Jak is a part of S.U.S., aka Shifting Uncertain Situations, and along with co-member Clack Auden, produced Astroturfs of Offense, a map of how paid crowd members move through the eco-system of politics and more. A wall text version of this diagram is being shown at The Influencing Machine, an exhibition curated by Aaron Moulton at The Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Poland. The show opened last Friday, June 24th, 2022, and runs until November 2022. We discuss his journey to get to the URL spaces (aka a billion different Discord servers) he often resides in, theatre kid energy, slow growth, saying "wet brain" out loud in public, devirtualizing, and what the term activist means in 2022.

  • For a full breakdown of S.U.S. and astroturfing in general, please listen to Jack and Clack's episode with New Models from late 2020 here.
  • To learn more about the exhibition, the museum, and its history please listen to Josh Citarella's recent conversation with Aaron Moulton here.

Edits to note:

  • At one point, I call the exhibition "The Influence Machine", it is in fact titled "The Influencing Machine".
  • I mean to say later on that "art museums need to have history wings, and history museums need to have art wings". I say history twice, oops.
  • I refer to Sol Lewitt as Sol "Dewitt", my bad.

Jak's links:

  • Instagram
  • Punctr.art

The colorway for this episode is S.U.S.'s "Astroturfs of Offense"

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