Untitled (Hypnosis Piece)

(Video, 27 Min)

STATEMENT

It should come as no surprise to anyone that media makers purposely and knowingly shape reality (realities) in an attempt to manipulate our thinking. Everyday we are exposed to carefully crafted messages specifically designed to pollute our ideas and understandings or to get us to buy a product or service.

In his book, Media Hypnosis (2002), Lonny Kocina, addresses this very idea: “The world is led by invisible generals who work inside the Trojan horse we call the media.  Their people have more control over your life than you know…We’re hypnotists in a sense…Who do we hypnotize? You.  We do it every single day.  Our medium could be television news, radio, newspapers, magazines – it doesn’t matter, they all work.  And just as a good hypnotist persuades his willing participants to behave as he tells them, we will soon have you making plans to do just what we want you to do.”

To be sure, this work uses the very tools it rallies against. Like several examples born from the Situationists (not excluding Adbusters or the Guerilla Girls), it employs the concept of detournement, the rearranging of sign-systems to promote an opposing message.

Guy Debord, the founding member of Situationist International, states, “ Any elements, no matter where they are taken from, can be used to make new combinations. The discoveries of modern poetry regarding the analogical structure of images demonstrate that when two objects are brought together, no matter how far apart their original contexts may be, a relationship is always formed… The mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the juxtaposition of two independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and produces a synthetic organization of greater efficacy. Anything can be used.”

Note: This is a low quality preview video.