Covert Opperation, 2022. Installation view, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2022
Whispers of Covert Operation presents a fractured world of symbolic remains, caught between ritualistic gesture and ideological collapse. The work unfolds as a constellation of objects—cloth-bound staffs, disfigured puppets, totemic devices, and video projections—that resemble the detritus of a once-envisioned communal future.
At the core of the installation is a nomadic puppet—a mask-sculpture reimagined as an allegorical narrator and third-party voice. Inspired by ancient Chinese decision-making tools like the Book of Changes, the puppet guides the narrative of the video component as a spiritual intermediary between the human protagonist (“I”) and the objects, environments, and forces encountered along the journey. This non-anthropocentric voice challenges human-centered logics of technology, identity, and power, suggesting alternative modes of interaction with the more-than-human world. Constructed as a guerrilla script unfolding across shifting terrains, the work reflects a disjointed search for meaning and position, contrasting the ideas of “Restate” and “Restage,” and invoking the historical role of sculptural materials as traded ritual commodities.
The puppet, manipulable and mobile, becomes both metaphor and critique: a symbol of spiritual extension in tribal cosmologies, and of systemic manipulation in contemporary life. It evokes a past when animal totems mediated the unknown, but also mirrors today’s human–AI dynamics—where consciousness, agency, and control are persistently blurred. This doubling underscores the failure of both past and future utopias to deliver stable truths.
The video follows figures—soldier-like travelers—moving through forests and deserts across California in a surreal, Quixotic journey. Their path merges natural performance with layered allegorical texts that hint at the latent possibility of witchcraft, not as fantasy, but as a coded technology of resistance. This speculative mode rethinks binaries: human/machine, nature/culture, body/tool, self/other. Yet the rituals feel improvised, worn, and unresolved—more like reenactments than active ceremonies. It is as if belief itself has become performative, hollowed out, aestheticized but no longer operative.
At the core of the installation is a nomadic puppet—a mask-sculpture reimagined as an allegorical narrator and third-party voice. Inspired by ancient Chinese decision-making tools like the Book of Changes, the puppet guides the narrative of the video component as a spiritual intermediary between the human protagonist (“I”) and the objects, environments, and forces encountered along the journey. This non-anthropocentric voice challenges human-centered logics of technology, identity, and power, suggesting alternative modes of interaction with the more-than-human world. Constructed as a guerrilla script unfolding across shifting terrains, the work reflects a disjointed search for meaning and position, contrasting the ideas of “Restate” and “Restage,” and invoking the historical role of sculptural materials as traded ritual commodities.
The puppet, manipulable and mobile, becomes both metaphor and critique: a symbol of spiritual extension in tribal cosmologies, and of systemic manipulation in contemporary life. It evokes a past when animal totems mediated the unknown, but also mirrors today’s human–AI dynamics—where consciousness, agency, and control are persistently blurred. This doubling underscores the failure of both past and future utopias to deliver stable truths.
The video follows figures—soldier-like travelers—moving through forests and deserts across California in a surreal, Quixotic journey. Their path merges natural performance with layered allegorical texts that hint at the latent possibility of witchcraft, not as fantasy, but as a coded technology of resistance. This speculative mode rethinks binaries: human/machine, nature/culture, body/tool, self/other. Yet the rituals feel improvised, worn, and unresolved—more like reenactments than active ceremonies. It is as if belief itself has become performative, hollowed out, aestheticized but no longer operative.
Covert Opperation, 2022, HD video (color, sound; 9:04 minutes)
Whispers of Covert Opperation, 2022, Detail of Puppets. Cloth, rope, railing, wool ball
Whispers of Covert Opperation, 2022, Performance collaboration with Activated Anamorphs, WQED Pittsburgh