Benjamin Bennett: Smile Through The Pain Until The Pain Makes You Smile

Episode 2 September 06, 2019 01:05:38
Benjamin Bennett: Smile Through The Pain Until The Pain Makes You Smile
The Exile Hour
Benjamin Bennett: Smile Through The Pain Until The Pain Makes You Smile

Sep 06 2019 | 01:05:38

/

Show Notes

“Every calamity is to be overcome by endurance.” -Virgil “Endurance is more important than truth..." -Charles Bukowski Ben Bennett (c.1984) is a unique, virtuosic free improvising percussionist who rose to international prominence and notoriety in 2014. After creating a series of live-streamed internet videos, in which he sat cross-legged and gazed into a camera all while maintaining a ceaseless grin upon his face for four hour durations, Ben joined the ranks of weird YouTube celebritydom. In 2017, after creating 300 episodes of “Sitting and Smiling,” he inexplicably began a new series entitled “Walking and Talking,” in which he walks and talks (often self-reflexively) on camera, typically also for four hours at a time. Ben is the son of American experimental text, sound, and visual poet John M. Bennett and brother of composer/performer John Also Bennett. Additionally, he is also a highly skilled urban forager, survivalist, and as we discover towards the conclusion of this episode, something of a freestyle rapper. Join us for this episode of THE EXILE HOUR in which we engage Ben in a fast & furious dialogue about the nature of post-human consciousness, endurance art, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, conspiracy theories, and suicidal selfie sticks.

Other Episodes

Episode 8

December 21, 2019 01:13:37
Episode Cover

KEEPING IT RAËL: Were Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad all Swastika-loving swingers from another solar system?

On December 13, 1973 French automobile journalist and race car driver Claude Vorilhon purportedly experienced a physical encounter with what he believed to be...

Listen

Episode 1

August 22, 2019 01:23:32
Episode Cover

Ira Isaacs: The P.T. Barnum of Scatology

In sterquiliniis invenitur. Can truth, redemption, and meaning be discovered in the places we least want to look? Listen to Caleb Jackson Dills and...

Listen

Episode 14

January 02, 2024 01:33:22
Episode Cover

Dan Zukovic: The Culture is Going Down On Itself (Still)

"The camera has unbound daemonic Western imagination. Cinema is sexual showing, a pagan flaunting. Plot and dialogue are obsolete word-baggage. Cinema, the most eye-intense...

Listen