Inside Intel investigates technology’s influence on conspiratorial thinking

“Inside Intel investigates the streams of information that coagulate to form our beliefs and opinions”, explains co-curator Jake Charles Rees. The exhibition brings together an “unorthodox mixture of work that responds to the chaos and confusion of the moment”, with an emphasis on conspiratorial thinking. Exhibiting at St James Hatcham, Goldsmiths from 16-20 October, the show is part of the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s 2018 Logan Symposium: Conspiracy. The show includes 24 hour rolling news, state propaganda and viral conspiracies. The works on display question and undermine other information in the exhibition, forcing the audience to thoroughly assess what they are being consciously or subliminally fed.

Inside Intel explores the fast-moving landscape of how contemporary media and technology influence our ways of thinking through a rich variety of cutting-edge artists and organisations. The show is a speculative “Silicon Valley Imagineering Laboratory” brimming with counter-narratives and factual misinformation. While some artworks peddle faux state propaganda and sinister new technologies, others document genuinely harrowing investigations and unsettling analytics.

“Ultimately the exhibition draws attention to the work of an international network of investigative journalists, whistleblowers and hackers”, states Jake. These are “the people who risk their lives to promote democracy, expose corruption and publish the information that societies desperately need to hold power to account”. Featuring work by current Turner-prize nominees Forensic Architecture as well as Benjamin Grosser, Céline Minkyung Park and Cosmic Latte — to name a few — Inside Intel creates an environment where fact, fiction and the theoretically possible seamlessly blur together.

The exhibition calls for constant alertness amongst its visitors, demanding an investigative eye to separate fake news from reality; mirroring the inherent difficulties we all face when navigating through the fog of electronic propaganda. Curator, Elliott Burns states, “from the outset we wanted to set the artwork within an environment that has ties to conspiracy and was simultaneously familiar. A Silicon-Valley-esque office has both these qualities”. The exhibition design mimics a corporate tech office, relating to the ironic Inside Intel logo that parodies the software giants. Further aesthetic touches such as a bespoke perspex desk and monotonous carpeting add to the corporate branding of the show. “Each artwork is integrated within this environment, detailing the show with overlapping narratives and breeding a sense of paranoia”.