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a message to my gangstalkers |
a message to my gangstalkers
More prints about Loneliness, Strangers, & Organized Monsters
Artist Statement
Gangstalking, or Organized Stalking (OS) is a method of harassment in which a Targeted Individual (TI) is observed, followed and intimidated by a group of Perpetrators (Perps) large and diverse enough to make identification or detection, difficult or impossible to prove. Likewise, most methods of intimidation are made to resemble irritating, run of the mill events in an effort to elude believability, reporting and prosecution.
Someone is following you, always a different someone, but you can’t prove it and it’s starting to make you feel crazy just like they wanted it to.
My accidental discovery of this purportedly widespread practice was the impetus for this series of prints. There was a Youtube video with the title “a message to my gangstalkers” in which a woman who identified herself as “pgmr64804” confidently, Sarah-Pallin-ly, told off her gangstalkers and assured them that she would not be brought down by them, that everything was actually going really well for her and that she was, in fact, married to “the best man in the whole area”. And at least this one, now deleted video, had that perfect balance: equal parts funny and sad, like an Onion article come to life. She was later barraged off Youtube (for her views on a seemingly unrelated topic) but not before I succumbed to the world of the “Related Video”.
And with each related video came a related subject or conspiracy. The funny to sad ratio shifted dramatically. Gangstalking led to gaslighting, which led to microwave technology, to alien abduction, to MKUltra, to FEMA internment camps, to the lizard people who are actually running things, to the Milgram Experiment, and so on. There were many more people documenting claims of “electronic harassment”, mobbings, sleep disruptions, wire tapings, and generally mild but disruptive activity that make day to day life difficult.
I want to be clear that I am not making a case for either the acceptance of the stories of the Targeted Individuals nor am I making a case against them. I want it to be clear, but I’m not sure it is. An even though it sort of turned my stomach when I read in Susan Clancy’s book Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens that in dealing with abductees she was taking their stories and beliefs seriously but not literally, I fear I’ve done the same. (She was following in the footsteps, apparently, of the great Harvard psychologist William James, who did the same in 1902 of religious experience.) I’ve enjoyed the emotional hovercraft that bobs up and down between amused shock and allowing myself to indulge fully in the possibility of truth. I’m certainly not above making jokes about my gangstalkers hiding my alien abduction books from me, but what I like about the ride is the more physical cognitive dissonance of the stomach’s brain; when you hit those bumps and everything flips for a moment and in that suspension you neither believe nor deny but it all makes sense. Of course in this culture where one can be simultaneously obese and malnourished we would likewise be overpopulated, packed like sardines, but lonely and lacking touch. The Targeted Individual Community seems more a canary in the coal mine than a lab rat to me, which is, hopefully, slightly more an homage than not.
Day to day life can be difficult. It can be especially difficult without magic, or a god, or a community to hang your hat on. Lack of faith, whether in religion or culture or government or self, abounds. Even the skeptics (a movement in itself) find meaning in debunking. Some story always seems to seep up and fill the faith void that science keeps emptying. We like stories. Maybe we’re just longing for a “why” story, a creation myth that we can revel in without tithing or buildings blocking our view. Maybe we’ve outpaced ourselves evolutionarily (again) and we’re missing/mourning our oral culture. It’s one thing, though, to be gazing up at Spider Rock, telling stories of weaving and time. What kind of tale do you spin if you’re gazing at the mole on the back of the neck of a man you will never speak to but whom you can smell? What kind of creation myth could you possibly generate when you stare at the swirling named islands of plastic in the ocean or the evaporating puddles of urine on the endless concrete sidewalk? It’s monstrous.
Real monsters have been virtually extinguished by science’s triumphant arm wrestling match with magic; even the fact that 1 out of every 5,000 corn snakes is born with two heads is now listed as a “Fun Fact!” in children’s literature. But we still make our own monsters and we build them with whatever is culturally available. Currently, neighbors are the new unknown. The religious experience partly gave way to the alien abduction experience and now we simply turn on each other. The obvious difference being that this final “experience” lacks enlightenment, or at least the feeling of enlightenment. But even in completely human form the theme of monsters still teeters between lack and excess, real and imagined. They don’t speak and they scream. They lurk. Our monsters, of course, are organized. They carry cell phones and follow us everywhere, mocking and consuming and annoying. They’re us.
And we’re terrified and (literally) twitching.
Nancy Prior
2010
More prints about Loneliness, Strangers, & Organized Monsters
Artist Statement
Gangstalking, or Organized Stalking (OS) is a method of harassment in which a Targeted Individual (TI) is observed, followed and intimidated by a group of Perpetrators (Perps) large and diverse enough to make identification or detection, difficult or impossible to prove. Likewise, most methods of intimidation are made to resemble irritating, run of the mill events in an effort to elude believability, reporting and prosecution.
Someone is following you, always a different someone, but you can’t prove it and it’s starting to make you feel crazy just like they wanted it to.
My accidental discovery of this purportedly widespread practice was the impetus for this series of prints. There was a Youtube video with the title “a message to my gangstalkers” in which a woman who identified herself as “pgmr64804” confidently, Sarah-Pallin-ly, told off her gangstalkers and assured them that she would not be brought down by them, that everything was actually going really well for her and that she was, in fact, married to “the best man in the whole area”. And at least this one, now deleted video, had that perfect balance: equal parts funny and sad, like an Onion article come to life. She was later barraged off Youtube (for her views on a seemingly unrelated topic) but not before I succumbed to the world of the “Related Video”.
And with each related video came a related subject or conspiracy. The funny to sad ratio shifted dramatically. Gangstalking led to gaslighting, which led to microwave technology, to alien abduction, to MKUltra, to FEMA internment camps, to the lizard people who are actually running things, to the Milgram Experiment, and so on. There were many more people documenting claims of “electronic harassment”, mobbings, sleep disruptions, wire tapings, and generally mild but disruptive activity that make day to day life difficult.
I want to be clear that I am not making a case for either the acceptance of the stories of the Targeted Individuals nor am I making a case against them. I want it to be clear, but I’m not sure it is. An even though it sort of turned my stomach when I read in Susan Clancy’s book Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens that in dealing with abductees she was taking their stories and beliefs seriously but not literally, I fear I’ve done the same. (She was following in the footsteps, apparently, of the great Harvard psychologist William James, who did the same in 1902 of religious experience.) I’ve enjoyed the emotional hovercraft that bobs up and down between amused shock and allowing myself to indulge fully in the possibility of truth. I’m certainly not above making jokes about my gangstalkers hiding my alien abduction books from me, but what I like about the ride is the more physical cognitive dissonance of the stomach’s brain; when you hit those bumps and everything flips for a moment and in that suspension you neither believe nor deny but it all makes sense. Of course in this culture where one can be simultaneously obese and malnourished we would likewise be overpopulated, packed like sardines, but lonely and lacking touch. The Targeted Individual Community seems more a canary in the coal mine than a lab rat to me, which is, hopefully, slightly more an homage than not.
Day to day life can be difficult. It can be especially difficult without magic, or a god, or a community to hang your hat on. Lack of faith, whether in religion or culture or government or self, abounds. Even the skeptics (a movement in itself) find meaning in debunking. Some story always seems to seep up and fill the faith void that science keeps emptying. We like stories. Maybe we’re just longing for a “why” story, a creation myth that we can revel in without tithing or buildings blocking our view. Maybe we’ve outpaced ourselves evolutionarily (again) and we’re missing/mourning our oral culture. It’s one thing, though, to be gazing up at Spider Rock, telling stories of weaving and time. What kind of tale do you spin if you’re gazing at the mole on the back of the neck of a man you will never speak to but whom you can smell? What kind of creation myth could you possibly generate when you stare at the swirling named islands of plastic in the ocean or the evaporating puddles of urine on the endless concrete sidewalk? It’s monstrous.
Real monsters have been virtually extinguished by science’s triumphant arm wrestling match with magic; even the fact that 1 out of every 5,000 corn snakes is born with two heads is now listed as a “Fun Fact!” in children’s literature. But we still make our own monsters and we build them with whatever is culturally available. Currently, neighbors are the new unknown. The religious experience partly gave way to the alien abduction experience and now we simply turn on each other. The obvious difference being that this final “experience” lacks enlightenment, or at least the feeling of enlightenment. But even in completely human form the theme of monsters still teeters between lack and excess, real and imagined. They don’t speak and they scream. They lurk. Our monsters, of course, are organized. They carry cell phones and follow us everywhere, mocking and consuming and annoying. They’re us.
And we’re terrified and (literally) twitching.
Nancy Prior
2010
82 photos
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items are from between 17 Nov 2009 & 22 Feb 2010.
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