*UNLOCKED* [#142-3] ALCHEMIC SURRENDER: George Soros, Tactical Media, & The Rise of the Influencing Machine w/ Aaron Moulton

Dimitri talks with curator Aaron Moulton about THE INFLUENCING MACHINE, his controversial 2022 exhibition at the Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland, which explores the largely forgotten but deeply consequential activities of the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in early ‘90s Eastern Europe, including: 

PART ONE: How the SCCA “landed like a UFO” in dozens of former eastern bloc cities from 1992 to 1995, engineering the scripted avant-garde, the rise of socially-engaged practice, comparing and contrasting SCCA with the CIA’s promotion of abstract expressionism, ontologies of randomness and meritocratic achievement in the art/media world…

Unleashing a dump truck of cash on two dozen cities at the height of shock therapy and currency collapse, the curiously advanced new media practices of the Centers, a neoliberal Trojan Horse called “art”, grooming local artists to embrace Open Society values, subtly blacklisting artists who thrived under the socialist system of Artist Unions, building early internet infrastructures in Romania, Eastern Europe as the bleeding edge of the cyber-frontier, “cowboy wizard” Jonathan Peizer, artists as the first point of call for any new technology, the mysterious "British spy" Bill McAllister, the 1994 “Alchemic Surrender” false flag exhibit on a Ukrainian battleship…

Suzy Meszoly’s intriguing journey from SCCA “czarina” and faithful Soros lieutenant to Buddhist vibrational healer and New Age conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, the challenges of discussing George Soros the Boogeyman, the prescient 1989 profile of Soros from a recently deceased friend of the show named TRAIN, comparing Meszoly’s 1990 Romanian exhibit “The Media Were With Us” with the 2003 German documentary “Checkmate: Strategy for a Revolution”, the CIA dramaturgy of Ceaușescu’s overthrow, Josh Harris, Pynchon’s “Bleeding Edge”, Gelitin, 9/11, Marina Abramovic and crossing the Pizzagate event horizon…

PART TWO: Art as the last green zone for madness and tactical magic, Marina Abramovic, looking at Michael Aquino’s career as performance art, doing black propaganda and calling it art, desecration becoming consecration, Fiona Hill invoking the Protocols of the Elders of Zion during the Trump impeachment hearings, the aesthetic similarities between the 1989 Romanian revolution and January 6th, the rise in conspiracy theory culture since 2015, Qanon shitcoating notions of the very real “deep state”, George Soros’s hardcore Esperantisto upbringing, Esperanto as an aspirational jihad of globalization, the Sorosification of the word “woke”, NGOs as a super-governmental mafia, Srdja Popovic’s “Merry Pranksters and Autocrats”, taking OTPOR! global with the Arab Spring and Maidan, Gene Sharp and Xtinction Rebellion, Dimitri’s experience in the Occupy tactical media experiment, the existence of cultural operatives who create scripted avant-gardes, the mysterious Japanese art-girl influencer Keiko Sei, parallels with Joanna Stingray’s adventures in the USSR, Aaron getting stalked by MIBs at his State Department-funded exhibition in Bulgaria…

The Soros Documentary Fund that produced “Liberia: An Uncivil War” in 2003, weaponized magic, performance art, and television spectacle in the Liberian conflict, “The Invention of Sacred Tradition” anthology, creating sacred situations with political witchcraft, how every mass ritual from the Olympics to the Grammys really is (in a sense) rubbin’ it in our faces folks, the cannibalistic spiritual bankruptcy of modern American institutions, the right-wing takeover of cultural institutions in Eastern Europe, and the negative e-flux review of “The Influencing Machine” that just so happened to be written by a confirmed “Soros mole”.