Hexen 2039: New Military-occult Technologies for Psychological Warfare: a Rosalind Brodsky Research Programme

Rosalind Brodsky, the alter ego of artist Suzanne Treister, is a delusional time traveller who believes herself to be working at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI) in the twenty-first century. Hexen 2039 charts Brodsky's scientific research towards the development of new mind control technologies for the British Military, through a kaleidoscopic series of drawings, diagrams and photographs which are by turns baroque, challenging, comic, elegant, mysterious and intriguing. These works uncover or construct links between conspiracy theories, occult groups, Chernobyl, witchcraft, the US film industry, British Intelligence agencies, Soviet brainwashing, and behaviour control experiments of the US Army and its Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (PSYOP), in light of alarming new research in contemporary neuroscience. An essay by Richard Grayson examines Treister's practice in detail. As a whole, this fascinating and complex body of work questions the way we look at history and the future, science, technology, politics, and narrative.