Hexen 2.0 Tarot
2012
Suzanne Treister
UK
Art Medium:
Pen drawing coloured with watercolour.
Description:
The style harks back to the graphics of 1960s hippy subculture magazines, especially the stylised typography. Many of the cards are devoted to the constellation of ideas around a particular individual. Thus The Fool is Aldous Huxley, The Magician Timothy Leary, The Emperor is Diogenes of Sinope, Five of Chalices to H.P. Lovecraft, Four of Pentacles is Tim Berners-Lee, Seven of Wands is Alan Turing, and so on. Other cards are associated with social movements and ideas, thus Wheel of Fortune is Cybernetics, The Moon is Transhumanism, Two of Chalices the Summer of Love, Two of Pentacles the Intercloud, Queen of Pentacles is associated with Electronic Surveillance, etc. Most cards incorporate substantial areas of text, so there is a deal of reading necessary to penetrate the linked idea set that Treister is exploring in this postmodern tarot. There are many emblematic references to images from alchemical engravings and woodcuts. Hexen 2.0 was an exhibition currently at the Science Museum in London (7 March - 1 May 2012). Their catalogue stated:- "HEXEN 2.0 charts the coming together of diverse physical and social sciences in the framework of post-Second-World-War US governmental and military imperatives. It investigates the development of cybernetics, the history of the internet, the rise of 'Web 2.0' and mass intelligence gathering and the interconnected histories of the counterculture, and explores the implications of new systems of societal manipulation and the development of a 'control society' alongside historical and current responses to advances in technology."
