THE UNTETHERED SOUL: AN INTERVIEW WITH KIRRA PUTNAM
Kirra V. Putnam is a Multi-Hyphenate Nymphet from Texas. She went to Film School and not Art School. She is Protestant not Catholic. She's so neo this and that. She makes her own Videos, and Drawings, and Music, all her life. Patronize Waysians in New York City.
Dylan: Ok the first question I have is - what was your first memory of being online?
Kirra: First memory of being online… so like, do iPod shuffles count? No that’s not really online, ok- my first memory of being online is, I got an iTouch - and I just like remember going on these like, really scene fanfiction kind of deep dives, or like, taking a lot quizzes and stuff - so I was involved with the scene community but also during the daytime I would go on Poptropica - and also I remember, oh - yeah this is probably like, the real first thing online - it confuses me what’s an application and stuff - but, I remember going on like, “ArtPics,” or like- it wasn’t picsart, picsart is my fav now - on the school computers, there was some kind of art making thing and it had like the really satisfying noises, with like - it’s just really tangible, but, yeah it's that mix of like Poptropica, scene fanfiction, and like, realizing I’m an artist, in my small Californian elementary school.
Dylan: Oh you grew up in California?
Kirra: I lived there for the first ten years of my life.
Dylan: What was that like? Were you near Silicon Valley?
Kirra: No, I was by the beach. So, as that pertains to Internet culture and stuff, I really don’t think people were as online as in other places. Like Poptropica was definitely around, and Club Penguin was around, but I was, I think, the exception that I was into Tumblr, my 9-year-old ass doing that, just like, wanting to have pretty hair.
Dylan: Well, since you were describing Tumblr - were you aware of the blog The Jogging, the Brad Troemel project?
Kirra: Most definitely not.
Dylan: I just bring that up because it was such a huge inspiration for the magazine.
Kirra: I’ll try to check it out. I’m still warming up…
Dylan: Well yeah it's interesting cuz yknow, I definitely had a similar experience online. Poptropica and Club Penguin, and sort of these - I mean I guess both of those - well not Club Penguin, but Poptropica still exists - but apparently half the old islands got shut down and it’s pretty sad.
Kirra: What a shame - I feel like that was such a good education - like I learned so much, and I don’t think they want us, they don’t want the kids to learn anymore!
Dylan: Well yeah, that is true, and I guess maybe I’m biased because every generation thinks they had the best childhood or whatever, but, yknow, is it hard to look, it's hard to see what Gen Alpha I guess is consuming these days and when I compare it to my own childhood it's like, I don’t know I feel like they’re really missing out.
Kirra: Yeah, I mean Boss Baby - that’s the future is like, the life cycle - I think the life expectancy will just go down, because kids might just see too much and kill themselves or something. I feel like what Gen Alpha has online is watching Instagram reels or TikTok, it’s very much watching things, but, back in the good old days you could participate online, and you really had to figure stuff out - and I think that is good for your brain.
Dylan: Yeah no totally I mean like yeah like also just like you know the memes about those videos where it's like the Family Guy clip and the Subway Surfers….
Kirra: It’s so crazy.
Dylan: Yeah and I guess on that note- so you know, you're doing Finding God on Omegle which relates to the older sort of Internet - so what do you think were your biggest influences for Finding God on Omegle? And they can be anything really.
Kirra: Inspiration… As always I am my biggest muse. I like was kind of personally going through like a point of religious confusion because as we talk about during your interview on that film, I grew up non-denominational Christian - my relationship with God was like kind of like a free floating like happy go lucky kind of space and then there was, I hate to admit it but the tradcath movement online -I started questioning if I had like much of a backbone in my faith at all, or if I’m just making things up and then there’s the Honor Levy short story, I forgot what its called - but that really spoke of experiences that I had on Omegle, like how much that had to do with coming of age, these were just things that were in my brain, and then they got fused together when my professor told me that we were pitching our documentary ideas in class that day, I was like “oh shit,” what is - oh can I curse?
Dylan: Yeah of course!
Kirra: I was like, what is something I can commit to with my short attention span for a number of months, and I was like, I really should take time and investigate my beliefs and then also just, the Internet, it’s so easy - I’ve been kind of mad at myself for how easy it is to just do like neon green and neon blue and be like, “oh this is an Internet aesthetic,” and everyone in my class is like falling at my knees like, “whoa this is so Gen Z,” I don’t know, it's easy and familiar and comfortable because I really do feel comfortable, at home, online, and until recently I felt really at home in God.
Dylan: I think the Internet aesthetic is definitely something that I’ve also been really attracted to, and I guess for me just sort of the - do you know the genre of rap that Reptilian Club Boyz and Yabujin do, y’know, HexD?
Kirra: Yes!
Dylan: Yeah I love doing that like, bitcrushed, but doing that to images, like degrading the image quality - but yeah, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you think is behind the resurgence of interest in God and religion among Generation Z - and it being so heavily intertwined with the Internet and Internet culture, how do you think that relates to the bigger picture?
Kirra: Mmkay mmkay. So I feel like it's such a copout but I feel like the resurgence of faith among younger generations is a rebellion against nihilism, it doesn’t- I think humans very much like to go with what feels good, and it does not feel good to live in the constrictions that modern life has put on us, or kind of just realizing the rules are stupid, that are determined by other people, it’s hyperawareness, like how Generation Z is the hardest generation to market to or whatever, advertise to. We’re just, we’re not buying politicians, we’re not buying celebs, but God is something that stood the test of time, people have stayed believing in God - and that kind of permanence is really attractive to a generation that just sees these cycles of things happening so fast, things going in the trend cycle, things going out - God is lindy.
Dylan: Yeah that’s a really good way to put it, I think the interest in so-called Lindy culture- I mean I guess, why do you think it took place mostly among Zoomers and younger millennials who were very online so to say, why do you think it was so deeply entwined with Internet culture?
Kirra: I think the interest in faith, and that being intertwined with people who are interested with being online comes down to some kind of connection, which I think is very sweet, people mostly go online to feel connected and people go to faith also to feel connected - and it just goes back to that thing where young people don’t want to be floating anymore, because it’s not fulfilling. And also just like the relationships people have with each other, and I know - I envy this - I know that boys talk philosophy all the time on Discord, they got some knowledge, and there are some pretty- I’m losing my point, but there are some pretty profound Christian philosophers - I just finished listening to the Audiobook of Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, and I was like, yeah , he makes some very logical points of like why it makes sense to believe in God and stuff, and like obviously you have to take some critical lens here and there, and I personally, I do believe in God, but yeah. But textually, I think people start there, with the aesthetics, and that it starts making sense, and I feel like that process, the way that time passes online, you don’t really notice what’s happening to you, and then there you are, you’re evangelized.
Dylan: Yeah, it’s like, like you said it's like a rejection of y'know, the sort of gigifcation of life, like oh you have to be flexible, you know, that sort of culture, the sort of just constant, that feeling of never being fully grounded or ever fully secure.
Kirra: The untethered soul.
Dylan: Yeah! And y’know, it's interesting because like - it's interesting that there was such - with Wet Brain, it's interesting that there was this convergence between this theory or philosophy that would have usually been relegated to postgraduate levels like Nick Land and Deleuze, and intertwining that with religion and the Internet, I think you put it very well. Well here’s the last question - what do you see in the future for art?
Kirra: What do I see in the future… ok…. All kinds of art will keep existing, keep moving - I do know that corporate style of just geometric little rainbow people with pastel colors will keep existing, but in this specific vein? I think it's gotta keep getting more engaging and I think this has to do with saturation or mediums that are used or, the juxtaposition of mediums I think is so, it does something satisfying and interesting- but yeah, with the saturation thing, I’m thinking about whether - yeah you could call it art- I saw these Nike Air Forces that were painted like the blackest black to ever exist, and I was like, woah, color. The culture is so babyfied that I think color is gonna play a big role in art to come- and personally for my own interest I am betting on video art, highly dispersed, being made by everyone, and accepted or not accepted- I don’t know, people should stay making videos, and it might age into other art, and that's a phenomenon I think we will see. Very literal things gaining meaning later on.
Dylan: Yeah, the saturation of colors, or overexposed nature- I think like you said it's like a rejection of mid-2010s saccharine - what I’ve always remember as the defining aesthetic of the mid 2010s was this real, super saccharine, very bland, gray, very boring- the example I think is really good is the McDonalds going from red to gray- I had one more thing to say, I forgot-
Kirra: While you remember that, I have another thing to say - it’s just like, I think we’re gonna see a lot less nuance, which is a good thing, since everyone is quote unquote communist now - the working man is gonna make something and it will be beautiful, what really puts my hope in that is the real true camo thing that elites started taking on-
Dylan: You mean like the jacket Walt Pearce would wear?
Kirra: Yeah, I think that the thing is gonna be that all art comes from the proletariat from now on.
Dylan: We can hope so. It’s almost like- again just to bring it back to the mid-late 2000s and early 2010s Internet- I remember how, like vaporwave started as this thing 20 year olds were making in their house on shitty computers, and then by 2015, Drake did that video Hotline Bling and then there's this album, its crazy, its this song by Chris Brown of all people - his album art is just so clearly vaporwave inspired and it came out in 2016 - and i think like you said, for me what I’ve always thought of during that era, the Internet really kind of forced itself onto mainstream culture in a good way, and perhaps we’ll see that again, I think that would be ideal- is that kind of what you’re getting at?
Kirra: I think so. I don’t know, I have some abstract image of people in the midwest rocking something and then it's just like, rediscovered. It will work its way through the Internet, someone will just glorify it.
Dylan: Yeah, a rejection of that sort of established - I say this as someone who lives on the East Coast - but y'know, a coastal elite.
Kirra: Yeah even I, in Texas, it's in the south but it's not really the south anymore. It's seceded via tech.
Dylan: Well I guess really quickly, do you think that living in California and Texas - how did that influence your art?
Kirra: Well California - the role that living in California played was - I felt pretty safe, but I really found God there. Growing up as a teenager, I think that vastness really set me up in my life and art to want to look at things that are a lot bigger than I… And I was pretty young, that's the most locational pertinent aspect of California in my art, the beach, and God. And living in Texas, I think it's a pretty emo thread, emo in the south, but I didn’t like going outside because it was hot, it was too hot for me! So that forced me on my phone, or on my computer, because I was like “what am I gonna do” - so that's a big thing. Austin- hipsters. So I lived in Austin in 2012, I was 11, but still, I remember going to American Apparel on the Drag, but hipster culture - my dad was really into hipster culture too, he would play the radio, AltNation, and during that I got a lot of familiarity with what is now “indie sleaze.” So yeah…
Dylan: It’s funny cuz it seems like Generation Z is the last generation where radio, even Apple Music radio, or the concept of a radio station for music- it almost seems like it's the last generation where that might be a thing.
Kirra: Nah dawg, student radio will always exist.
THE UNTETHERED SOUL: AN INTERVIEW WITH KIRRA PUTNAM
Kirra V. Putnam is a Multi-Hyphenate Nymphet from Texas. She went to Film School and not Art School. She is Protestant not Catholic. She's so neo this and that. She makes her own Videos, and Drawings, and Music, all her life. Patronize Waysians in New York City.
Dylan: Ok the first question I have is - what was your first memory of being online?
Kirra: First memory of being online… so like, do iPod shuffles count? No that’s not really online, ok- my first memory of being online is, I got an iTouch - and I just like remember going on these like, really scene fanfiction kind of deep dives, or like, taking a lot quizzes and stuff - so I was involved with the scene community but also during the daytime I would go on Poptropica - and also I remember, oh - yeah this is probably like, the real first thing online - it confuses me what’s an application and stuff - but, I remember going on like, “ArtPics,” or like- it wasn’t picsart, picsart is my fav now - on the school computers, there was some kind of art making thing and it had like the really satisfying noises, with like - it’s just really tangible, but, yeah it's that mix of like Poptropica, scene fanfiction, and like, realizing I’m an artist, in my small Californian elementary school.
Dylan: Oh you grew up in California?
Kirra: I lived there for the first ten years of my life.
Dylan: What was that like? Were you near Silicon Valley?
Kirra: No, I was by the beach. So, as that pertains to Internet culture and stuff, I really don’t think people were as online as in other places. Like Poptropica was definitely around, and Club Penguin was around, but I was, I think, the exception that I was into Tumblr, my 9-year-old ass doing that, just like, wanting to have pretty hair.
Dylan: Well, since you were describing Tumblr - were you aware of the blog The Jogging, the Brad Troemel project?
Kirra: Most definitely not.
Dylan: I just bring that up because it was such a huge inspiration for the magazine.
Kirra: I’ll try to check it out. I’m still warming up…
Dylan: Well yeah it's interesting cuz yknow, I definitely had a similar experience online. Poptropica and Club Penguin, and sort of these - I mean I guess both of those - well not Club Penguin, but Poptropica still exists - but apparently half the old islands got shut down and it’s pretty sad.
Kirra: What a shame - I feel like that was such a good education - like I learned so much, and I don’t think they want us, they don’t want the kids to learn anymore!
Dylan: Well yeah, that is true, and I guess maybe I’m biased because every generation thinks they had the best childhood or whatever, but, yknow, is it hard to look, it's hard to see what Gen Alpha I guess is consuming these days and when I compare it to my own childhood it's like, I don’t know I feel like they’re really missing out.
Kirra: Yeah, I mean Boss Baby - that’s the future is like, the life cycle - I think the life expectancy will just go down, because kids might just see too much and kill themselves or something. I feel like what Gen Alpha has online is watching Instagram reels or TikTok, it’s very much watching things, but, back in the good old days you could participate online, and you really had to figure stuff out - and I think that is good for your brain.
Dylan: Yeah no totally I mean like yeah like also just like you know the memes about those videos where it's like the Family Guy clip and the Subway Surfers….
Kirra: It’s so crazy.
Dylan: Yeah and I guess on that note- so you know, you're doing Finding God on Omegle which relates to the older sort of Internet - so what do you think were your biggest influences for Finding God on Omegle? And they can be anything really.
Kirra: Inspiration… As always I am my biggest muse. I like was kind of personally going through like a point of religious confusion because as we talk about during your interview on that film, I grew up non-denominational Christian - my relationship with God was like kind of like a free floating like happy go lucky kind of space and then there was, I hate to admit it but the tradcath movement online -I started questioning if I had like much of a backbone in my faith at all, or if I’m just making things up and then there’s the Honor Levy short story, I forgot what its called - but that really spoke of experiences that I had on Omegle, like how much that had to do with coming of age, these were just things that were in my brain, and then they got fused together when my professor told me that we were pitching our documentary ideas in class that day, I was like “oh shit,” what is - oh can I curse?
Dylan: Yeah of course!
Kirra: I was like, what is something I can commit to with my short attention span for a number of months, and I was like, I really should take time and investigate my beliefs and then also just, the Internet, it’s so easy - I’ve been kind of mad at myself for how easy it is to just do like neon green and neon blue and be like, “oh this is an Internet aesthetic,” and everyone in my class is like falling at my knees like, “whoa this is so Gen Z,” I don’t know, it's easy and familiar and comfortable because I really do feel comfortable, at home, online, and until recently I felt really at home in God.
Dylan: I think the Internet aesthetic is definitely something that I’ve also been really attracted to, and I guess for me just sort of the - do you know the genre of rap that Reptilian Club Boyz and Yabujin do, y’know, HexD?
Kirra: Yes!
Dylan: Yeah I love doing that like, bitcrushed, but doing that to images, like degrading the image quality - but yeah, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you think is behind the resurgence of interest in God and religion among Generation Z - and it being so heavily intertwined with the Internet and Internet culture, how do you think that relates to the bigger picture?
Kirra: Mmkay mmkay. So I feel like it's such a copout but I feel like the resurgence of faith among younger generations is a rebellion against nihilism, it doesn’t- I think humans very much like to go with what feels good, and it does not feel good to live in the constrictions that modern life has put on us, or kind of just realizing the rules are stupid, that are determined by other people, it’s hyperawareness, like how Generation Z is the hardest generation to market to or whatever, advertise to. We’re just, we’re not buying politicians, we’re not buying celebs, but God is something that stood the test of time, people have stayed believing in God - and that kind of permanence is really attractive to a generation that just sees these cycles of things happening so fast, things going in the trend cycle, things going out - God is lindy.
Dylan: Yeah that’s a really good way to put it, I think the interest in so-called Lindy culture- I mean I guess, why do you think it took place mostly among Zoomers and younger millennials who were very online so to say, why do you think it was so deeply entwined with Internet culture?
Kirra: I think the interest in faith, and that being intertwined with people who are interested with being online comes down to some kind of connection, which I think is very sweet, people mostly go online to feel connected and people go to faith also to feel connected - and it just goes back to that thing where young people don’t want to be floating anymore, because it’s not fulfilling. And also just like the relationships people have with each other, and I know - I envy this - I know that boys talk philosophy all the time on Discord, they got some knowledge, and there are some pretty- I’m losing my point, but there are some pretty profound Christian philosophers - I just finished listening to the Audiobook of Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, and I was like, yeah , he makes some very logical points of like why it makes sense to believe in God and stuff, and like obviously you have to take some critical lens here and there, and I personally, I do believe in God, but yeah. But textually, I think people start there, with the aesthetics, and that it starts making sense, and I feel like that process, the way that time passes online, you don’t really notice what’s happening to you, and then there you are, you’re evangelized.
Dylan: Yeah, it’s like, like you said it's like a rejection of y'know, the sort of gigifcation of life, like oh you have to be flexible, you know, that sort of culture, the sort of just constant, that feeling of never being fully grounded or ever fully secure.
Kirra: The untethered soul.
Dylan: Yeah! And y’know, it's interesting because like - it's interesting that there was such - with Wet Brain, it's interesting that there was this convergence between this theory or philosophy that would have usually been relegated to postgraduate levels like Nick Land and Deleuze, and intertwining that with religion and the Internet, I think you put it very well. Well here’s the last question - what do you see in the future for art?
Kirra: What do I see in the future… ok…. All kinds of art will keep existing, keep moving - I do know that corporate style of just geometric little rainbow people with pastel colors will keep existing, but in this specific vein? I think it's gotta keep getting more engaging and I think this has to do with saturation or mediums that are used or, the juxtaposition of mediums I think is so, it does something satisfying and interesting- but yeah, with the saturation thing, I’m thinking about whether - yeah you could call it art- I saw these Nike Air Forces that were painted like the blackest black to ever exist, and I was like, woah, color. The culture is so babyfied that I think color is gonna play a big role in art to come- and personally for my own interest I am betting on video art, highly dispersed, being made by everyone, and accepted or not accepted- I don’t know, people should stay making videos, and it might age into other art, and that's a phenomenon I think we will see. Very literal things gaining meaning later on.
Dylan: Yeah, the saturation of colors, or overexposed nature- I think like you said it's like a rejection of mid-2010s saccharine - what I’ve always remember as the defining aesthetic of the mid 2010s was this real, super saccharine, very bland, gray, very boring- the example I think is really good is the McDonalds going from red to gray- I had one more thing to say, I forgot-
Kirra: While you remember that, I have another thing to say - it’s just like, I think we’re gonna see a lot less nuance, which is a good thing, since everyone is quote unquote communist now - the working man is gonna make something and it will be beautiful, what really puts my hope in that is the real true camo thing that elites started taking on-
Dylan: You mean like the jacket Walt Pearce would wear?
Kirra: Yeah, I think that the thing is gonna be that all art comes from the proletariat from now on.
Dylan: We can hope so. It’s almost like- again just to bring it back to the mid-late 2000s and early 2010s Internet- I remember how, like vaporwave started as this thing 20 year olds were making in their house on shitty computers, and then by 2015, Drake did that video Hotline Bling and then there's this album, its crazy, its this song by Chris Brown of all people - his album art is just so clearly vaporwave inspired and it came out in 2016 - and i think like you said, for me what I’ve always thought of during that era, the Internet really kind of forced itself onto mainstream culture in a good way, and perhaps we’ll see that again, I think that would be ideal- is that kind of what you’re getting at?
Kirra: I think so. I don’t know, I have some abstract image of people in the midwest rocking something and then it's just like, rediscovered. It will work its way through the Internet, someone will just glorify it.
Dylan: Yeah, a rejection of that sort of established - I say this as someone who lives on the East Coast - but y'know, a coastal elite.
Kirra: Yeah even I, in Texas, it's in the south but it's not really the south anymore. It's seceded via tech.
Dylan: Well I guess really quickly, do you think that living in California and Texas - how did that influence your art?
Kirra: Well California - the role that living in California played was - I felt pretty safe, but I really found God there. Growing up as a teenager, I think that vastness really set me up in my life and art to want to look at things that are a lot bigger than I… And I was pretty young, that's the most locational pertinent aspect of California in my art, the beach, and God. And living in Texas, I think it's a pretty emo thread, emo in the south, but I didn’t like going outside because it was hot, it was too hot for me! So that forced me on my phone, or on my computer, because I was like “what am I gonna do” - so that's a big thing. Austin- hipsters. So I lived in Austin in 2012, I was 11, but still, I remember going to American Apparel on the Drag, but hipster culture - my dad was really into hipster culture too, he would play the radio, AltNation, and during that I got a lot of familiarity with what is now “indie sleaze.” So yeah…
Dylan: It’s funny cuz it seems like Generation Z is the last generation where radio, even Apple Music radio, or the concept of a radio station for music- it almost seems like it's the last generation where that might be a thing.
Kirra: Nah dawg, student radio will always exist.
Kirra Putnam interviewed by Dylan Smith
