HEXEN 2.0

Suzanne Treister

HEXEN 2.0

January 17 – February 23, 2013

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 17, 6-8pm

P.P.O.W is pleased to announce the opening of HEXEN 2.0, Suzanne Treister’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. HEXEN 2.0 looks into histories of scientific research behind government programs of mass control, investigating parallel histories of countercultural and grass roots movements. Treister’s 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, increased intelligence gathering and implications for the future of new systems of societal manipulation towards a control society.

HEXEN 2.0 specifically investigates the participants of the seminal Macy Conferences (1946-1953), whose primary goal was to set the foundations for a general science of the workings of the human mind. Treister’s project simultaneously looks at diverse philosophical, literary and political responses to advances in technology including the claims of Anarcho-Primitivism and Post Leftism, Theodore Kaczynski/The Unabomber, Technogaianism and Transhumanism, and traces precursory ideas such as those of Thoreau, Warren, Heidegger and Adorno in relation to visions of utopic and dystopic futures from science-fiction literature and film.

The artworks exhibited are based on actual events, people, histories and scientific projections of the future. They consist of alchemical diagrams, a Tarot deck, photo-text works, pencil drawings, a video, and the website HEXEN 2.0, offering a space where one may use the works as a tool to envision possible alternative futures.

Suzanne Treister studied at St Martin’s School of Art, London (1978-1981) and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1981-1982) and currently lives and works in London. Primarily a painter through the 1980s, Treister was a pioneer in the digital/new media/web based field from the beginning of the 1990s, developing fictional worlds and international collaborative organizations. Recent exhibitions and events include solo and group shows at the Science Museum, London; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Raven Row, London; Secession, Vienna; Museum of Contemporary Art (CAPC) Bordeaux; Annely Juda Fine Art, London; and Tate Britain, London. Treister’s work is held in private and public collections including Tate Britain, EMI Paris, Arts Council of England, Center for Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu (CoCA), Poland, and AXA Collection.