At 7pm, join us for a final ‘surveillance’ under the watchful eye of spies, cameras and avian informers, present, of course, for your own good and the Homeland’s too. There will also be spy music  and wine to loosen lips.*

*We are required to inform you that your words and actions may be documented and used against you. No warrants required.

At 8pm, David Goren, Secret Wars contributor, will present the radio-inflected soundscape, The Short Attention Span Audio Theater, featuring excerpts from Antimatter, a sci-fi noir tale of shortwave radio espionage written by the mysterious C.M. Stanbury.

Spy music mix created by the polymusicologist Friese Undine.

• Under deep cover, a spy waits by a shortwave radio ready to copy down a long string of numbers.
•  Dictatorships jam signals beaming in from clandestine stations operated by opposition groups.
•  The first act of a conquering rebel group or invading army is to take over the radio station.
•  Sarcastic and seductive voices: In World War II Lord Haw Haw, Tokyo Rose, and Ezra Pound tried to demoralize the troops and the folks back home.
•  Urban gladiators like Skyhawk, Lt. Columbo and Switchblade take to Channel 6 on Citizens Band radio for a keydown. The winner takes the frequency. The loser is a “mud duck.”

Radio producer and audio archivist David Goren hosts a listening session and informal discussion about the way radio is used in battles of ideology and territory. The session will include a live tuning of a Cuban numbers station intended for Cuban spies in the United States.

…

David Goren is a radio producer and audio archivist, who has messed around with shortwave radio sound for 40 years.  He has created several pieces about shortwave for public radio including NPR’s Lost and Found Sound series, On the Media and Afropop Worldwide. David is also the creator of the Shortwaveology podcast and website which explore the aesthetics, culture and history of shortwave radio broadcasting and monitoring, and The Shortwave Shindig, a live performance mix combining archival audio soundscapes with real time tuning and performance. Other projects include, The Tuning Lab, a shortwave monitoring station configured for use by composers and sound artists, The Propagations,a radio jam band with Ned Sublette and the forthcomingInterval Signal Improvisation Project.

Predator 2 by Joy Garnett

Secret Wars, the second exhibition in Proteus Gowanus’ yearlong exploration of Battle, explores the cryptic ways of warfare waged behind the cloak of invisibility. From neurophysical conflict deep inside the human amygdala, to the broadcast signals used by spies and intelligence agencies, to the everyday observation of ordinary citizens by omniscient bureaucracies, Secret Wars reveals covert communications hiding in plain sight.

Curated by Proteus Gowanus co-creative director Tammy Pittman and anthropologist Thomas Ross Miller, the exhibition brings artists from New York, Amsterdam and Berlin to trace the gaps, silences, and blackouts that conceal vital and deadly knowledge.

Who controls secret information, and who has the power to understand it? How do we protect ourselves from unseen enemies? Who wins and who loses when the battle is unending and unknowable? Through art, artifacts, books, sound and surveillance, these installations render what is absent present and what is invisible visible. Inside a special room, mysterious and hypnotic short-wave radio messages in unbreakable codes are beamed to hidden spies. Lost treasures, occult symbols and predator drones appear and disappear, closely guarded enigmas shrouded in obscure and half-forgotten codes.

Artists and works include:

Front404 – PanoptICONS
Joy Garnett – Predator series
David Goren – “Atencion! Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero”: The Mystery of the Shortwave Numbers Stations
Nene Humphrey – Circling the Center
Anna Livia Löwendahl-Atomic – Did a Nose Launch a Thousand Ships? and Otophgraphs, fragments from The Mu{e}sum
Renée Ridgway – Revelation of the Concealed: Politics (in)form
Tony Stanzione – Safety First
Smudge Studio – TRANSCOM Room
Bryan M. Wilson – Canticle for Sebeok (Atomic Priesthood)
The Mildred Complex(ity) – Vestments for Ten Millennium (Atomic Priest Suit)