Dissonance connects the work of Rebecca Himelstein and Joseph Wilcox. It’s several comparable definitions include, “a lack of harmony between musical notes” and “tension created by two disharmonious elements.” Dissonance can be a real double-edged sword of experiences. 

The affective relationship to this uniquely powerful, ubiquitous force can feel like either a siren song, luring twisted ears, or a strange puissance capable of disturbing the mind, or both. The haunted sound of two frequencies that oscillate against each other, two sets of information in disagreement. More specifically, a dissonance experienced within society brings together the two artist’s works. In this era of political unrest, dissonance may be the aura of dissent or the evidence of transgenerational trauma endured under a fascist regime. Misinformation abound, social distortion, is an American punk band that gained popularity in the nineties but more importantly has a really nice logo and makes for a succinct title for this collection of artworks. 

For the exhibition, social distortion, the artists present new bodies of work inspired by their research driven studio practices and respond to particular theories. Curiosities peaked by the social phenomena of affect theory and conspiracy theory, the artists use their inquiries as muse for experimentation. 

Rebecca Himelstein’s sound installation, four hand-bound books and performance instructions explore the symbolic restraints for affective space between individuals by pushing them into embodied experiences. Her sound installation, Untitled 9-10 (cycles), uses the program SuperCollider to synthesize audio in real time via algorithmic composition. Setting the scene for experiencing the exhibition at large, two speakers face each other, oscillating frequencies that create a charged environment for considering how individuals affect each other. Walking around the gallery space, the viewer observes shifts in the beat pattern created by these nearly similar frequencies based on their proximity to the source of each sound. The dissonance experienced by the sound as it fills the gallery is akin to the discord of sensing affect. The sound installation brings conceptual framework and computation to a history of music/sound influenced by extended technique like Eliane Radigue or Steve Reich. The four handbound books, Untitled 1-2,3-4,5-6,7-8 (stretched), look closely at the interstices of affecting individuals. Operating as metaphor or gesture, the line drawn between imagined participants is stretched across numerous pages, distorting the image of the original mark made on stretchable consumer grade plastics, and distorted again when the resulting print is reproduced, showing tracings of CMYK failure with quiet streaks of colored toner found among the pages.   

Joseph Wilcox’s deep dark internet probing reveals the conspiracies surrounding a man named Martin Klein, uncovering the evidence of his findings as images, video and sound. The impetus for the artworks presented in social distortion, stem from an interest in understanding conspiracy logic as truth-making. Central to understanding the workings of conspiracy logic and the mysterious main character, the video In Search of Martin Klein unpacks an unstable narrative that implicates copious cultural figures as well as other conspiracy theories. As the story unfolds, what was once believable by pure naivety is pushed into the realms of the comically absurd to the tune of Nathan for You or Too Many Cooks. By staging these artworks as artifacts, the gallery presents a repeating image that reinforces the key elements to the conspiracy, while simultaneously showcasing contemporary pillars of knowledge and data mining via technology (google). The dissonance found within Wilcox’s zany and comical project echoes the humility of 2016 Presidential election. Spinning out on socialist rhetoric, punk rock, Allen Ginsberg, Tupac Shakur, Jackson Pollack, Back to the Future, the Situationists, Vladimir Putin’s personal advisor, and a peculiar brick symbol — what we know about these points of reference versus what we’re being told about them scrambles the conspiracy logic into dissensual numbing mush. And what continues to haunt the viewers of this project, is what we know to be true but remain complicit with.