"When you look too long into the abyss, the abyss looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
At the Science Museum in South Kensington, London people can find windows into the past and present alike. They can sit for peaceful hours gazing at deep beauty rendered upon canvas or peruse the three dimensional from every angle. Notwithstanding that all art might be great depending on whose point of view is being taken, the museum's new exhibit Hexen 2.0 is a transcendental experience. It offers what most art can only hint at, a stinging mirror into the soul of humanity.
Suzanne Treister the Artist of Hexen 2.0
Suzanne Treister was born in the United Kingdom in 1958. After attending various art schools, Treister would live all over the world becoming renowned for her skills as a painter. From there she branched out, making her mark as a pioneer in digital media, who merged several mediums to create often complex and eccentric art that explores the very edge of hallucinogenic sanity.
In 2006 she released Hexen 2039, which follows the research of an alter ego, Rosalind Brodsky, a woman who believes she's capable of time travel and is in the employ of a dangerous government institution called the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI). If the acronym reminds the brain of Illuminati it's not a coincidence.
While the character's narrative and organization are fictitious the research is not as it pulls together links between government conspiracies, the occult, para-normal military movements, and Hollywood with alarming factuality. What Hexen 2039 and Rosalind Brodsky implicate is a long reaching hand of evil always out of sight that controls the world like a puppet, but it is only the tip of a dangerous iceberg.
Tarot Cards, Historical Diagrams, and the Macy Conferences
Hexen 2.0 differs from 2039 by shifting gears to focus primarily on the control of society through technology. It takes a further step, however, by following society's response back to these advances in technology while projecting that all movement is part of a much bigger plan to achieve mass control over the populace. The result is artwork that is precise and deliberate while seeming to be completely random.
This is accomplished through complete renderings of history, its rabbit hole connections, and its possible outcomes in the form of intricate diagrams. They are drawn almost like maps from a fantasy world and indeed they are maps. Instead of charting the layout of make believe worlds the diagrams outline the roads society has taken figuratively in the past century. Treister also completed a whole deck of Tarot cards for Hexen, taking the original meanings of the cards themselves and expounding them exponentially to be relevant gateway glimpses at what may come.
Treister's exhibit also heavily investigates the post WWII Macy Conferences (1946-1953), which gave birth to cybernetics. Best said by Treister herself, the idea behind cybernetics is, "The Science of control." Control of everything from animals to machines, but mostly people.
Science Museum of London England to Exhibit Hexen 2.0
The Musuem has been very vocal in their support, excitedly stating their enthusiam for the project. The Head of Art Projects, Hannah Hedler, said this of Hexen 2.0 in a press release, "... a beautiful, compelling body of work which will captivate and amaze our visitors." Indeed it is, but with work so fantastically complex when will Treister be able to out do herself again? The answer is about the same time the world is able to wrap its mind around what she has given it now.
Hexen 2.0 will be displayed in the Science Museum's Bridge Gallery. It opens in March. For additional viewing all the artwork can be found on Treister's website or in the book issued by Black Dog Publishing.
Sources:
- Treister, Suzanne. "Hexen 2.0." Ensemble. Ensemble, 2011. Web. 12 Feb 2012.
- Nicola, Ryan. "Press Release Hexen 2.0 Suzanne Treister:Science Museum exhibits new work by artist Suzanne Treister." Science Museum. Science Museum, n.d. Web. 12 Feb 2012.
- Treister, Suzanne. "Hexen 2039: new military-occult technologies for psychological warfare." Enseble. Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI), n.d. Web. 12 Feb 2012.
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