Riar Rizaldi Notes from Gog Magog

Indonesian artist Riar Rizaldi describes Notes from Gog Magog as visual and narrative research for a non-existent horror film, a kind of application for a film. The work explores the links between ghost stories, urban legends, the culture of tech companies in South Korea, and the economics of logistics in Indonesia.

Although Notes is not, strictly speaking, a video essay, it uses techniques that are typical of the genre, such as voiceover and found audio recordings, and the narrative is supported by filmed material that defines the location and the mood of the stories told. The visually intense horror cutaways are created using early neural networks, which were not yet subject to bans on violent or shocking images.