Adrian Villár Rojas: 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. Adrian Villár Rojas is an Argentinian sculptor and installation and video artist.