Notes on the Double Agent
October 16 - 18, 2014
Axel Straschnoy
October 16 at 19:00:
James Jesus Angleton
October 18 at 16:00:
Agent GARBO
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Notes on the Double Agent is a series of performance-lectures on stories of double agents. A mix of magic lantern show, Powerpoint presentation, and secret agent aesthetics, the lectures present these stories through images projected on the wall – some still, some moving, – sound, and the lecturer’s voice.
At New Shelter Plan two lectures will be presented:
James Jesus Angleton was the editor of the avant-garde poetry journal Furioso during his years at Yale. Furioso was part of the new critique movement which held fast to the idea that a poet can mean two contradictory things at the same time.
Between 1954 and 1975, as CIA Director of Counterintelligence, he translated this idea to the world of espionage, and stated that it is therefore impossible to say who an agent is actually working for. This did not deter him from grounding the CIA to a halt in a 20-year hunt for a mole that was never found.
Juan Pujol was a Spaniard commissioned by the German intelligence service to build an agent network in Britain during WWII. Stuck for a year in Portugal he started a secret agent network with the help of travel guide and a dictionary. He eventually became part of the british secret service and extended his “network” as far as Ceylon and Canada. Pujol is the only person to have been con decorated by both sides for his work in the war.
Axel Straschnoy (Buenos Aires, 1978, lives and works in Helsinki) is a visual artist interested in issues of machine-mediated representation. He has previously presented his work in Copenhagen in Kunsthal Charlottenborg (The Spring Exhibition, 2013), Koh-i-noor (Opening Prints, 2010), Overgaden (Camera Projection, 2008), and in the street exhibition Urban Pedestals (2007). Elsewhere, his work has been presented in places like Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), Kiasma (Helsinki), Museo de arte moderno de Buenos Aires, Palais de Tokyo, Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki), and others.
This event is supported by Norden.
