Changing the way we think about art and advertising.
Academic
author, artist, auteur
My work focuses on metamodernism, a contemporary ‘structure of feeling’ which oscillates between (post) modern enthusiasm and irony, hope and melancholy, naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
Advertising and the Metamodern Sensibility (2025)
Produced in the interest of knowledge sharing and public engagement, this recording was created with the goal of making the metamodern sensibility accessible to a wider audience. The overview you will hear was generated with the assistance of Notebook AI, an AI writing tool that translates written material into an audio-friendly format while preserving its core arguments and insights. Modelled on popular podcasts, the recording takes a deep dive into my PhD thesis: “The Metamodern Sensibility: An Examination of Contemporary Western Societies through Advertising” (2025). The recording covers what the metamodern sensibility is, how contemporary crises such as the GFC, climate change, and failure of Third Way politics helped shape the structure of feeling, and how these changes are reflected through advertising.
SELECTED ART
“With, Between, Beyond” (2023)
Influenced by works such as The Climate Reality Project’s “The Way Forward” (2013), “With, Between, Beyond” (2023) is an example of a metamodern short film. Accompanied by “Through the Leaves” (2023) from Sleeping Ghost, the featurette ponders contemporary environmental and geo-political issues such as climate change and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Oscillating between a typically (post) modern sensibility, this film is intended to inspire a sense of informed naivety or pragmatic idealism. Click back to find out about how the form, feeling, and function of this short film reflects a metamodern ‘structure of feeling’.
Technical: 2023, colour, HD video, 16:9, 2:49 mins
Music: “Through the Leaves” by Sleeping Ghost
SELECTED ADVERTISING
Technical: 2025, colour, HD video, 16:9, 1:21 mins
Music: “Snowman” (2017) by Sia
“Omni Conservation” (2025)
Modelled after the environmental communications from the ‘second wave’ of green advertising, “Omni Conservation” was created to show how advertisers might tackle climate change by catering to metamodern condition and sensibilities. The advertisement, which invites the audience into its narrative with an open and welcoming hand, knowledges the threats associated with global warming such as the melting of ice caps and rising sea levels. However, it does not dwell on them. Rather, the advertisement uses these dangers as a means to emphasise the joys and experiences which might be lost if climate change is allowed to continue unabated. Powered by “Snowman” (2017) by Sia, this advertisement reflects a metamodern structure of feeling as it not only aims to elicit feelings of sorrow and nostalgia, but also joy and hope for the future.
Technical: 2023, colour, HD video, 16:9, 1:15 mins
Music: “Icy Roads” by Slip Stream
Technical: 2023, colour, HD video, 21:9, 1:06 mins
Music: “Starting Up” by Slip Stream
Technical: 2023, colour, HD Video, 16:9, 0:32 mins
Music: “Long Strokes” by Ziv Moran
“Omni Culinary Insititute” (2023)
A take on advertisements from institutions such as universities and TAFEs (Technical and Further Education), “Omni Culinary Institute” champions a metamodern sensibility. This is presented through its use of modern enthusiasm, naïveté, empathy, totality, and purity. However, for the astute observer, a postmodern irony, melancholy, apathy, plurality, fragmentation, and ambiguity can be felt via what the advertisement fails to show such as the presumption of a middle-class upbringing in a happy ‘nuclear’ family, the advertisement’s focus on white males and the exclusion of others, as well as its unproblematic representation of neo-liberal ideas such as ambition, social mobility, and vocation.
“Omni Communications” (2023)
Inspired by the advertisements produced in Australia during the COVID-19 lockdown, “Omni Communications” presents the adverse sociological effects of the pandemic such as isolation, poverty, conflict, anxiety, and illness. This representation of the difficulties of living in lockdown is supplemented with examples of how people coped with change. For example, through exercise and self-care, romantic and familial connection, and perhaps most importantly engagement with information and communications technology as a way to find some degree of contact and togetherness through digital platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Jitsi, and FaceTime.
“Omni Card'“ (2023)
An imitation of advertisements from financial institutions as well as online lending and borrowing platforms such as Flash Money, Nimble, and Pepper Money, “Omni Card” attempts to combine enthusiasm and irony, humour and gravitas, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation. This was done through the juxtaposition of positive and negative emotions such as stimulation and frustration, payment processes with financial or technical difficulties, informal attire and relaxed settings with serious and dramatic music, individuality and diversity with repetition and uniformity, consumerism with enablement, and personal problems with impersonal solutions.
EDUCATION
PhD (Candidate), La Trobe University (In Progress)
Master of Science, The University of Edinburgh (2014)
Bachelor of Arts, La Trobe University (2012)
NETWORKS AND AWARDS
ARCH Metamodernism Research Network (2019 - Present)
Golden Key International Honours Society (2012)
Executive Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence (2011, 2012)
La Trobe Award for Community Engagement (2013)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
“The Everything Bagel: A Metamodern Examination of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” (In Progess).
“Between Hope and Melancholy: A Metamodern Examination of Lars Von Trier’s Melacholia” (2022). READ MORE
“New Lives, New Research Agendas: Sociology Amid and Beyond the Pandemic Symposium” (2022). READ MORE
EMPLOYMENT
Academic Tutor, The University of Melbourne (2022, 2023)
Academic Tutor, La Trobe University (2019, 2021, 2022)
Residential Tutor, St Hilda’s College & Trinity College (2019, 2020)
Lecturer and Academic Tutor, Trinity College - Pathway School (2019)
SUBJECTS TAUGHT
Sociology and Culture; Sociology of Relationships; Understanding Sociology; Next Generation Professionals; History of Ideas; Contemporary Sociological Theory; Media and Society; Marketing Communications, Introduction to Media Communications; Media, Identity, and Everyday Life; International Politics; Philosophy: The Big Questions; Reason; Introduction to Political Ideas; Politics and the Media; Ecological History of Humanity; Modern and Contemporary Literature.
“For we contend that metamodernism should be situated epistemologically with (post) modernism, ontologically between (post) modernism, and historically beyond (post) modernism”
— Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen
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