Hexen 2.0 is a full colour book by artist Suzanne Treister and accompanies her current and similarly titled exhibition at London’s Science Museum. It (the book and the show) “charts the coming together of diverse physical and social sciences in the framework of post-Second-World-War US governmental and military imperatives, and represents the artist’s “research into the development of cybernetics, the history of the Internet, the rise of Web 2.0, mass intelligence gathering and the interconnected histories of the counterculture.” Yeah, fascinating … and a helluva lot to take in.
Honestly, I found the book to be a bit self indulgent but nonetheless perfect to plop down on an arty coffee table or the night stand of any intrigued night owl. In fact, some students of art-colleges.com should like the book as well. The artwork is handicrafty and complex. The thought process behind the idea: well laid out, complicated and apparently exhaustive. Also, I got a kick out of flipping through the book to come across the author’s homage to Bob Black’s Abolition of Work
Hexen 2.0 is free to the public to view and runs at the Science Museum (Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD) until 30 April 2012.
