ABOUT WILD EYE ARCHIVE
We live in a world packed to the gills with everything. We have access to nearly everything mankind has ever made or known at the touch of a button. Naturally, when it comes time to sort the wheat from the chaff, to make that ever infamous choice of what to watch/read/listen to, it isn’t surprising many seize up and default to doom-scrolling and mindless binges. It’s all simply too much. Like the days of cable, it’s a world with a million channels, and yet there’s still “nothing on.”
Like with food, however, the empty calories you consume in your media diet will catch up to you in the end. From dwindling attention spans to aimless algorithm-driven offerings, more interested in serving up the most basic, inoffensive “content” imaginable, it feels like we’re headed for a world that has commodified art and entertainment well out of proportion and into the realm of devaluation.
That stops here.
Wild Eye Archive is the Electric Gallery of Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow. A place to run riot, a sandbox for art and entertainment history without the limitations of ideology or the pressures of social media culture. Readers of this newsletter’s earlier iteration will recall my article “Why I Curate” and will hopefully enjoy what happens when the preacher puts his words into practice. From here on out, we are a curated guide through great works and overlooked gems from all over the globe, hand-picked and brought to life in two unique ways.
Video Retrospectives — These will be monthly spotlights focused on the stories of storytellers and craftspeople rarely told, released on YouTube. We are working hard on developing insightful documentaries on fresh topics yet uncovered by other video essayists, and in a way that does not carry over the tiresome pretenses of the format. These are not fly-by-night operations either, demanding hours of editing and research in order to give this unique pantheon the treatment they deserve. More will be revealed in a future channel trailer.
Weekly Newsletters — Just because the videos will take their sweet time doesn’t mean radio silence is what’s left on the menu. On the contrary, we’ll aim to release a Monday newsletter starting May 5th that curates an array of unique offerings across all manner of media, from movies to music to literature and more. Some may be organized around a theme or an era, others a true potpourri, assembled with reckless abandon and a simple love of what’s there.
We are not interested in the stale political games of the “Culture War” nor the rules of the contemporary critical establishment. Wild Eye Archive is the product of over a decade of homegrown curiosity about fine art and popular entertainment. The end result of an encyclopedic mind, fostered and fed since high school, completely immersed in his chosen field.
One day we may venture into the pastoral England of painter John Constable, the next celebrating the best in boom-bap from the 90s. One day we’re digging into the fantastical horrors and occult mysteries of Weird Tales, the next we’re saluting Akira Kurosawa and his incredible dramas. We’ll also aim to include at least one contemporary work in each newsletter (alongside completely modern curation sets as well) because I do want to break out of my own comfort zone and celebrate some of what’s going on today. The beauty of this project is you’ll never know where we go next. You’ll never know where next that Wild Eye will fall. If you’re open to adventure, in need of something beyond your creature comforts, or are simply curious, we are the place to be, and in time, the place to beat.
