Music & Film
Mail Art
about the art
This month we’re examining the experience of individuals within algorithm-dominated, corporate systems with a film by Forbes Graham and mail art by Felix Quintana.
During a 15-month job search, sound artist and filmmaker Forbes Graham submitted hundreds of applications for a data analyst position—all of which he knew would be scanned by a computer before they ever reached the eyes of a person. His film Cover Letters transforms this experience into a frenetic visual tapestry, where text from his applications forms a hallucinogenic, corporate Rorschach test. His improvised electronic score mirrors the persistence of his search—relentless melodies cutting through noise in a musical metaphor for trying to stand out in an impersonal, algorithm-driven hiring process.
Felix Quintana’s mail art, Community Crossing the Street by Langer's Square, MacArthur Park, is a cyanotype print using imagery from Google Street View, which photographs streets and neighborhoods through car-mounted cameras—only to erase faces for privacy. Felix reframes this erasure as a symbol of the disappearing histories of families and businesses in Southeast, Central, and East Los Angeles communities. Deeply personal to him, his work uplifts the beauty of day-to-day routines and emblems of diasporic communities of Los Angeles, centering their enduring stories of migration and resilience.