smartdumb issue 01: rocky vs twombly

limited edition zine (run of 100).

sixteen pages of naturally faulty remembrance and artificially intelligent fantasia.

a freewheeling fever dream about the fictional boxer rocky balboa and the very real ‘rocky statue’, a bronze sculpture that lived at the top of the steps of the philadelphia museum of art in the early 80s.

the statue was manufactured as a prop for the filming of the movie rocky 3. instead of taking it down, the actor sylvester stallone decided to leave it in place on the steps as a ‘gift’ to the city of philadelphia. a war of many sorts ensued.

the statue has unusual resonances with cy twombly's ‘50 days at iliam’, an esoteric suite of ten paintings created around the same time as bronze sculpture. the suite, acquired by the philadelphia museum of art in 1989, loosely depicts the greeks’ defeat of troy, in which another gift-statue, the trojan horse, plays an integral part.

the zine uses period-specific typesetting and stable diffusion ai imagery to explore the spaces between rocky, twombly, high art, commercial art, technology’s role in cultural memory, head trauma aka boxer brain, personal mythmaking, the fleeting value of leaving a legacy, and the importance of forgetting the stories we tell ourselves.

limited to 100 copies, hand-numbered by nick sylvester.