Back in 2020 I discovered LHOHQ, an internet rabbit hole filled with shocking images, clashing color schemes and conspiratorial copypastas.
When I initially discovered the website I was drawn to the art and aesthetic. Clicking around eventually led me to ACDCA. I wrote the whole thing off as an art project and moved on after the pandemic ended.
Today, for no good reason, I decided to look back into this whole thing with all the new experience I've gained in the past 6 years. I am much more comfortable with web applications and OSINT and I guess I hoped to find the true owner of this mess.
LHOHQ Beginnings
As far as I can tell, the first time LHOHQ hit the internet was February 2007 as part of interlude.20m.com, a website created in 2004 and maintained as a gallery of images.
By mid-2008 the standing domain lhohq.info as it exists today was created. lhohq.info has multiple subdomains, one being phonograph.lhohq.info which provides a board allowing anyone to submit a "postcard" to the website containing text, title and one link.
In particular, there are a couple of posts which stand out. One links to wakest.info early on in the site's message board. The post is from 2011 and discloses both a request to meet in NYC and a mutual connection.
Heading over to this linked site we see that Zon and noir77 were working on SVG animations together:
DISCLAIMER
At this point, we are talking about Real People who Really Exist so be nice.
END DISCLAIMER
noir77 also maintaned a portfolio blog with an open identity. It's worth mentioning that this noir77 also claimed to live in NYC.
LHOHQ People
Looking up Paloma Julia Kop brings us to her new site containing all the art she's made since noir77 shut down.
She's still making art! Very cool.
Zon was pretty easy to find on Vimeo, of all places. It looks like they are in Berlin now. Which makes sense given the artist cultural exchange program perpetually occurring between NYC and Berlin.
Both of these artists are in the XXIIVV Webring, which we can hopefully explore later. Another early post links Weather Maker Press
This is the old portfolio site of an artist named Gina Kelly. I think I have found her as well, but I'm not sure she ever lived in NYC so she doesn't really help me get closer to the owner of LHOHQ.
Two of the videos on LHOHQ's website were directed by Mark Escribano. Whether or not they were used with permission is not known by me, but Escribano lives in LA, and (if my intuition is correct) so does Gina Kelly.
LHOHQ Blog Circle
Finding all these people is great. I reached out to them to see if any of them would be interested in talking about LHOHQ, their art or what they're doing now. For the time being, let's circle back to the first appearance of LHOHQ at interlude.20m.com.
The last active snapshot of interlude contains "An Open Letter to America Jones" that stood out to me because:
America Jones is on the Blogroll of ACDCA. Most of these links are noise with the exception of Mother Jones which looks to be a progressive magazine.
Clicking into the blogroll of America Jones shows that LHOHQ is circularly linked, as well as the publications of Hakim Bey, an anarchist thought leader who died in 2022.
LHOHQ's connections to anarchism will be discussed in another post.
Current Conclusions
LHOHQ was created by a left-leaning hypermedia artist in 2007 as part of a larger internet art blog by "Lulabell Petunia" which then spun off into a standalone project that continues to be actively developed by one or more individuals associated with hypermedia art, anarchist theory, or both. A webring of blogs (a "blogroll") was created around "Lulabell Petunia," "America Jones," LHOHQ and other projects to help persist and disseminate each artist's work.
Next post will examine the connections between LHOHQ and known anarchist hacktivists.