Who’s Pulling Your Strings? An installation by DJ Meisner in /room/, juried by Nicolás Colón and Fernanda Partida Ochoa.
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 10 | 5 to 8pm
Who’s Pulling Your Strings? is an installation by DJ Meisner exploring the effects of our unprecedented exposure to algorithmic flows of images and symbols.
The exhibition is titled after the essay of the same name by Mark Fisher, a member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit. The experimental cultural theorist collective, formed in 1995 and since disbanded, influenced the ideologies of neo-reactionaries like Curtis Yarvin and Marc Andreessen, as well as leftist accelerationists like Nick Srinicek and Helen Hester. Fisher’s essay is posed as a transcript that a “bemused colleague” found online and illustrates the concept of hyperstition, when an idea or work of fiction turns into reality through cultural feedback loops, bringing about the very thing it describes. One of the most effective ways that hyperstition works is through imagery. Here, as in other areas of CCRU research like demonology and accelerationism, a mystical experience of the image emerges.
Meisner’s installation references a range of images and texts, including a platter engraved with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ signature and Aberration in the Heartland of the Real by Dr. Wendy Painting, a book researching the conspiracy theories related to Timothy McVeigh and the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. The space’s walls are covered in gold foil, resembling the small, hidden rooms for conspiratorial research seen in popular media, like Rust’s storage container from True Detective or the motel room from the 2006 movie BUG. Meisner proposes that the main survival tactic of the twenty-first century will not be understanding the individual images and symbols we are fed, but “gathering the vibe of their flow.” Herein lies the risk: Are we making true meaning or simply perceiving coherence and patterns in random data?
DJ Meisner is an artist making mixed media work about conspiracy theories, spiritual experience, and being online. He works with the mediums of photography, painting, drawing, and sculpture. DJ is also a frequent contributor to and active member of the publishing platform Do Not Research. Over the past few years, he has made work about Point Reyes National Seashore, The Clinton Crime Family, and Project Stargate, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s project studying astral projection and out of body experience.