Much like the contemporary “new Cold War,” the rhetoric of the 1980s was supported by the possession of nuclear weapons, fueling widespread anxiety. This period gave rise to two opposing propaganda machines: one emphasizing the concept of peace, the other freedom and the “free world.” Colonial histories underpinned both. War had long since become embedded in economic processes and projections.
The banner gazes at us with eyes made of sector diagrams, functioning as a totemic symbolic structure. One diagram, representing the future, is expanded with hand-sewn lines—sun rays emerging from the eye that consumes these statistics, algorithms, and, ultimately, humans.
