Suzanne Treister: Prophetic Dreaming

The exhibition, following chronologically from the early works of Suzanne Treister (born 1958, London, United Kingdom), shows the diversity of her practice, carried out within internet art, interactive technologies, painting, video, photography and drawing. The artist began work on projects concerning video games, virtual reality and computer software as early as the late 1980s. Among her early works, the exhibition presents, among others, the series "Video Game Paintings" (1989–1991) and "Software" (1993–1994), depicting hypothetical computer applications that foreshadow those shaping our present experience of technology.

The monumental cycle "Time Travelling with Rosalind Brodsky" (1995–2006) explores the 20th and 21st centuries from the perspective of Treister's fictional alter ego. Brodsky, who like Treister has Polish roots, is convinced that she works at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI) in London. The exhibition at the Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi will present, among other things, the fantastical costumes and devices Brodsky uses for time travel, as well as documentation of fictional research projects: "GOLEM/LOEW: Artificial Life" (2001–2002), concerning the desire to create artificial life on Earth, "Operation Swanlake" (2003–2004) and "HEXEN 2039" (2004–2006), which analyses the use of occult practices by armed forces in psychological warfare. This cycle exemplifies Treister's strategy of building multi-threaded, fictional worlds that say much about our present day.

Treister developed critical perspectives on the internet, drawing on knowledge of its history and of how we use it today, in the cycle "HEXEN 2.0" (2009–2011), which includes, among other things, her own alchemical diagrams and tarot cards. These means of expression allow the artist to reveal the connections between the history of the development of cybernetics, the military roots of the internet, and the formation of new systems of global manipulation and control. Treister highlights the intersections of these phenomena by juxtaposing them with the parallel history of grassroots and countercultural social movements. The exhibition also includes large-scale post-futurist projects created by Suzanne Treister over the last ten years, such as the cycle "SURVIVOR (F)" (2016–2019) and "The Escapist (Black Hole Spacetime)" (2018–2019).

In one of her newest projects, "HEXEN 5.0" (2023–2025), Treister again uses the symbolism of tarot cards and alchemical diagrams, analysing the functioning of artificial intelligence (AI), the climate crisis and quantum physics. She seeks hope for the future of the world in building grassroots communities, counterculture and an ethics of care. The cycle "Institute of Mystical Earth System Science" (2025), presented for the first time at the exhibition "Prophetic Dreaming", is a proposal for a new, holistic field of research, visualising the activities of over two hundred global institutes working on the rebuilding of the Earth and the survival of the planet.

"Prophetic Dreaming" highlights numerous astonishing, often disquieting, premonitions of future events, made possible by the perceptive and critical analysis of history and the present that Treister has pursued since the beginning of her work. Suzanne Treister's artistic practice developed in the 21st century primarily within traditional techniques such as painting and drawing, which allowed her to place contemporary technological inventions within the sphere of dreams and spirituality to which mystical practices have referred for millennia. In this context, the tarot decks created by the artist are tools serving not so much to predict the future as to involve people in action…