Map the Zeitgeist

In “Map the Zeitgeist” (2024 - in progress), a narrator seeks to capture the zeitgeist embodied by Britney Spears’ late 90s hit “…Baby One More Time.” Set against the backdrop of Los Angeles in 1999, the speaker attempts to trace the impact of this pop cultural phenomenon on the streets, but is instead continually confronted by the shifting urban landscape. The satellite image accompanying the text, which transforms the city into scientific matter, loses its precision as it becomes an affective map, glimmering and fading with the narrator’s recollection of chasing the zeitgeist through Los Angeles. In the City of Angels, the speaker finds, pop sensations are worshipped like Gods, and prove more eternal than any landmark.