This performance-lecture invites audeinces to consider whether we are entering a new era of invisible architectures and algorithmic systems shaping perception, knowledge, and power. In the program, 2026 LG Guggenheim Award recipient, artist, and author Trevor Paglen traces a dense network of ideas spanning philosophy, belief, deception, and speculation.
Bringing together psyops, artificial intelligence, magic, mind control, UFOs, the secret of the Ark of the Covenant, and the figure of a new demiurge, Paglen examines historical precedents for the manipulation of human perception and cognition at a moment when artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly pervasive.
Across his practice, Paglen has repeatedly revealed the infrastructures through which information systems—governmental, corporate, and algorithmic—operate beyond the threshold of human perception while profoundly reshaping how reality is understood. Drawing on figures and practices from diverse domains, ranging from the Central Intelligence Agency to stage magicians and contemporary technologists, the talk uncovers recurring strategies of influence and control. In doing so, it raises timely questions about why supposedly rational minds remain vulnerable to structures of influence that bypass conscious reasoning and instead engage our most instinctive psychological responses.
The program will be followed by a conversation between Paglen and Noam Segal, LG Electronics Associate Curator, reflecting on how rapid developments in artificial intelligence—from large language models to agentic and robotic systems—are reshaping everyday life, modes of thought, and artistic practice.
