HEXEN 2.0 by Suzanne Treister is a series of works with strong network related concerns spanning across a number of forms including alchemical diagrams, a Tarot deck, photo-text works, pencil drawings, a video and a website. The works investigate:
histories of scientific research behind government programmes of mass control, investigating parallel histories of countercultural and grass roots movements. HEXEN 2.0 charts, within a framework of post-WWII U.S. governmental and military imperatives, the coming together of scientific and social sciences through the development of cybernetics, the history of the internet, the rise of Web 2.0 and increased intelligence gathering, and implications for the future of new systems of societal manipulation towards a control society…Treister’s body of work presents a unique critical overview of modern intellectual and scientific history. Key to her artistic strategy is her decision to represent her visions of past interrelated histories by employing alternative systems for divining meaning or creating knowledge: alchemical drawings, tarot cards, gematria and the seance. She writes, ‘By representing these subjects and histories through the lens of the alchemical and the occult, HEXEN 2.0 offers a space where one may use the works as a tool to envision possible alternative futures.’
HEXEN 2.0 is currently showing at the Science Museum in London. Originally seen on the E-Flux announcements list.
