Kim Jong-il Looking At Things

2010

Date: 9 November 2010 · Place: Tumblr, source images from KCNA state press service · Figures: Kim Jong-il, subject · Joao Rocha, blog curator · Tags: Single-Serving Tumblr, Found Imagery, State Photography 01. A Blog With One Joke On 9 November 2010 the Lisbon-based copywriter Joao Rocha launches the Tumblr blog Kim Jong-il Looking At Things. The site reposts North Korean state press photographs of the Dear Leader inspecting factories, agricultural products, and military hardware, captioned only with the object being inspected. The blog runs for fourteen months until Kim's death on 17 December 2011. Rocha then opens a successor for Kim Jong-un. 02. The Single-Serving Tumblr Format Looking At Things crystallizes a Tumblr genre: one premise, one URL, indefinite scroll. Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, Animals Talking In All Caps, Texts From Bennett, and Garfield Minus Garfield share the form. The format depends on Tumblr's reblog mechanism, which lets a single observation circulate and accumulate as collective ritual rather than authored joke. The blog is studied as an example of editorial restraint at internet scale, the curator who writes nothing but the captions. Sources • Kim Jong-il Looking At Things, Tumblr archive (2010-2011) • The Atlantic, 'A Brief History of Kim Jong-il Looking At Things' (19 December 2011) • Wired UK, 'Joao Rocha on Curating Authoritarian Photography' (5 March 2012)