Sculpture, animation, takeaway, training workshop. Originally commissioned for Techne, organized by Theater Rampe and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Additional workshops conducted at Triangle, New York and Dunes, Portland as part of Body Double, curated by Nicole Kaack

Remote Viewer considers the “psychic spying” units run by the U.S. government between the 1970s and the 1990s.  These units tasked people with supposedly exceptional psionic abilities to mentally travel to covert enemy sites, then record what they “viewed” in writing, drawing, and even clay sculpture.

This project takes several forms, including a floor-based form, designed with Bureau V; a wall projection of historical drawings made through psychic transmission; and a workshop, in collaboration with Ian Hatcher, that instructs participants in this technique.  These forms come out of interviews with the original “psychic spies,” archival research, and Hatcher and my personal training in remote viewing.

It bears stating that Hatcher and I are highly skeptical about the veracity of remote viewing.  However, we also recognize a parallel between remote viewing and the “black boxes” of contemporary surveillance and data capture.  By considering the structural opacity of remote viewing, could we better understand how obfuscation and mystification have come to render the current mechanisms of power unintelligible to the average user?

Remote Viewer (object), installation views at Koenig & Clinton, New York, 2018 (photos: Jeffrey Sturges)

Remote Viewer (animation) projected at Koenig & Clinton, 2018

Remote Viewer (takeaway) at Koenig & Clinton, 2018.

Training workshops at Theater Rampe, Stuttgart — November 17th and 18th, 2017. Shown: Benjamin Hille, Stefan Wancura, Jonas Monib, and Marie-Louise Meyer

Clay models made by participants of the training workshops at Theater Rampe

Remote viewings of participants of the training workshops at Triangle Arts Association, New York—November 2018