In Très Mall, Larson stages a philosophically-driven satire within the purgatory of an infinite shopping mall, where late-capitalist consumption becomes both setting and subject. The series brings together a rotating cast of thinkers including Noam Chomsky, David Joselit, Priyamvada Gopal, McKenzie Wark, and Boris Groys, translating dense theoretical positions into an absurd, painterly animated world. Larson treats animation not as illustration, but as a philosophical medium capable of rendering ideology visible, experiential, and strange.
Presented alongside Made in Mexico: The Anti-Communist Cartoons of Dibujos Animados S.A. (1952–56), the work extends into archival research. These films, produced under the United States Information Agency, deployed modernist animation to circulate American political interests across Latin America. In collaboration with Byron Davies and Carlos Oliva Mendoza, Larson reconstructs this largely overlooked history through screenings and critical texts, tracing animation’s dual function as aesthetic experiment and instrument of persuasion.
Together, these projects position animation as a site where ideology is not simply represented but operationalized, linking Cold War propaganda to the diffuse spectacle of contemporary consumer culture.
New York, NY
Très Mall Full Series on DIS
Screening of "Mexican Animation, Propaganda and the Cold War," on the anti-communist propaganda project carried out in Mexico from 1952 to 1956 by the United States government. Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca (The General Archive of the State of Oaxaca AGEO)
7pm Wednesday, February 11, 2026
