The Office of Control
The Office of Control is a political art project about the psychology of authoritarianism, staged as a speculative bureaucracy.
The first three phases look at psychological models of coercion and their imagined deployment.
Release phases:
Phase 2: Project Room #214
Phase 3: Project #214:RC Calsley
Writing
Statement of intent:
“The Office of Control examines the psychology, materials and processes enabling authoritarian systems. Working through plans, diagrams, institutional artifacts, and media, the practice reveals how seemingly banal mechanics of architecture, bureaucracy, and process transform into instruments of coercion, surveillance, and social ordering.”
Statement of intent – in full>>
Concepts of control
“The Office of Control is building literacy in institutional critique of language for our audiences so their access is increased, and so that eventually, they are also implicated by their understanding.”
Concepts of control – in full>>
The Library of control
“They are not theoretical. Every mechanism documented here exists, has historical precedent, and is deployed now. In marketing. In technology. In immigration enforcement, welfare administration, criminal justice, population management. ”