Telepathy and New Labor

About

Telepathy is defined as the ability to know what is in someone else’s mind (or to communicate with someone mentally) without using words or physical signals. It is related to such notions as precognition, psychokinetics, sixth sense, premonition, augury, precognition, telekinesis, and telesthesia. A bevy of new technoceuticals that technologically assisted telepathic capacity (such as brain–computer interfaces, cortical implants, bio neuro-headsets, and neural ‘smart’ dust) are already in use. Elon Musk created Neuralink to overcome what he considers to be the main obstacle to optimum human–machine interaction in communication: bandwidth. Touch screens and keyboards are slow and inefficient means to interact with a computer. However, “neural lace” and “neural dust” provides a much faster high-bandwidth interaction with which Musk hopes to make consensual telepathy possible for everyone by using brain-computer interfaces to intensify their mental capacities in the workplace. In cognitive capitalism, the proletariat working on the assembly line has been replaced by the cognitariat working on the World Wide Web using virtual platforms to create data. These new brain-based mediated telepathic and telemetrix technologies, which recode our brain wave patterns into data streams open for analysis and algorithmic jurisprudence, have opened a window into our unconscious. As such, what Shoshana Zuboff in Surveillance Capitalism has called the “Big Other” will take on added significance as a means of total control and subjectivization. Artistic practices engaged with telepathic practices by producing alternative uses beyond optimization in the workplace create the possibility to experiment ourselves out of this future nightmare—if we only have the will to think and act to make it possible.

Rules on Obligatory Tests and Face Masks from Saturday 17 April 2021

In accordance with the regulations announced by the Berlin Senate, all visitors to the gallery must present a negative COVID-19 test result from a point-of-care antigen (PoC) rapid test (so-called Corona rapid test) or a negative PCR test result that is no more than 24 hours old. Self-tests are not acceptable for this purpose. People who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and whose second shot was more than 15 days ago do not have to present a negative COVID-19 test result. Information on test centres can be found at: www.test-to-go.berlin.

Visitors (aged 14 years and over) are required to wear an FFP2 face mask in all indoor areas of the gallery. Children between 6 and 14 years of age may wear a surgical-style mask instead.

This project is made possible with support from Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz e.V., and private donors.