Suzanne Treister “Hexen 2039 (Witches 2039)”
Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Cross-fades / Artists
Suzanne Treister “Diagram - Hexen 2039”, (mixed media project), ink on paper, 145.5 x 144 cm, 2008
Hexen 2039 (Witches 2039)
Installation of drawings and objects, 2006 – 2008
“Hexen 2039”, in different formats, presents the research results of time traveller Rosalind Brodsky. Brodsky thinks, she is doing para-scientific research for the development of new mind control technologies for the British military commissioned by the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI) in London. Rosalind Brodsky here is an absent fictional alter-ego of the artist and is named after her Polish-Jewish grandmother who fell victim to the genocide of WW II.
The large-format diagrams in ink, the 49 charcoal drawings and innumerable objects collected via Ebay – tarot-cards, second-hand souvenirs, microphones – are only one part of the extensive work of “Hexen 2039”. The art work draws links between military research and the occultism of Alistair Crowley, The Wizard of Oz, Jewish kabbalah, psychological experiments, black magic rituals, and science fiction. The 19th century style charcoal drawings, with historical, fictional, and present references present a kind of argumentation that is complemented by the diagrams and objects. But what do they demonstrate or prove? It remains unclear which event they refer to and which theories of conspiracy a true and which are false. The queerness of a lot of information in “Hexen 2039” makes it impossible to distinguish what is fact and what is fiction, what imagination and what conspiracy, what is historical documentation and what paranoia. “The whole thing is a sci-fi construct, like a series of novels set in the future but drawing upon the past.” (S. T.)