88-minute nonfiction video
236-page supplementary text
discussion tour
2008-2009
An immersive journey through the recent history of reactionary American apocalypticism. Using archival video, movement propaganda and original investigative material, the film and book track the emergence of a mass movement seeking “dominion” over all aspects of contemporary society. Structured as multi-layered cinematic essay, the film investigates the ideological echoes between an obscure Christian survivalist group active in the 1970’s-80’s (the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord or CSA) and the mainstream Christian Right of today. The book, A Kingdom at Any Cost, combines supplementary interview material by leading experts on apocalypticism, new religious movements and religious violence with CSA documentation, excerpts from two memoirs by Kerry Noble (former religious leader of CSA) and an extended screenplay excerpt of Silhouette City. In addition to a theatrical premiere at The Roxie Theater in San Francisco, the project has been presented widely through a screening/discussion tour of numerous film festivals and college campuses.
directed by Michael W. Wilson; produced by Natalie Zimmerman; edited by Holen Kahn & Michael W. Wilson; music composed by Ori Barel
media blackout
Michael W. Wilson 2004-2006
Video Game (3D FPS) A labyrinth-arena in which the player experiences the THE WAR ON TERROR as a coordinated in-game
advertising campaign. Surrounded by artificial intelligence, embedded media noise and a sea of oil,
players attempt to maintain psychological resistance while choosing to escape, transcend or challenge
an allegorical corporate-media-defense-industrial landscape.
Exhibition History:
2006 Underfire, I-Space, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL
2005 FILE Electronic Language International Festival, Sao Paolo, Brazil
2005 Rhizome Commissions, New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY
2005 Entermultimediale2, Prague, Czech Republic
Additional 3D Character Modeling – Andy ‘SHaRD’ Osborne
Additional production assistance provided by Rhizome.org
A speculative account of a ‘domestic’ terrrorist’s post-mortem journey through the physically empty yet haunted corridors of the Death Star. The video combines news footage from the 1995 bombing with gameplay footage from a modified Star Wars video game. When asked to explain his crime, Timothy McVeigh often compared his victims to those innocents killed in the destruction of the Death Star – the climactic moment of the 1978 film. Invictus (Latin for “invincible” and the title of the 19th Century poem from which McVeigh took his “last words”) posits a possible afterlife in which McVeigh’s fantasy role is realized.
waco resurrection
Collaboration with Eddo Stern, Peter Brinson, Brody Condon, Mark Allen & Jessica Hutchins
2003-2004
Video Game Installation (3D FPS)
As predicted by his Branch Davidian followers, Vernon Howell (aka David Koresh) has returned to Mt. Carmel for final battle. Revisiting the 1993 Waco, Texas episode, gamers enter the mind and form of a resurrected David Koresh through custom headgear, a voice-activated, hard-plastic 3D skin. Each player enters the network as a Koresh and must defend the Branch Davidian compound against internal intrigue, skeptical civilians, rival Koresh and the inexorable advance of government agents. Ensnared in the custom “Koresh skin”, players are bombarded with a soundstream of government “psy-ops”, FBI negotiators, the voice of God and the persistent clamor of battle. Players voice messianic texts drawn from the Book of Revelation, wield a variety of weapons from the Mount Carmel cache and influence the behavior of both followers and opponents by radiating a charismatic aura.
Exhibition History:
2004 Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO
2004 BananaRAM Festival, Italy
2004 Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, Australia
2004 Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands
2003 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2003 The Kitchen, New York City, NY
c.o.m.a.
Communicatus Operatio Militia Apocalypsis
multiple media 1995-2001
A long-term attempt to construct a liberatory organizational model for the apocalyptic impulse. Part secret society, part religion and part quasi-military signal corps, C.O.M.A. emerged from the discovery of a “lost” language of survival: the International Signal Code. This code, eleven body signals and eighteen ground signals, constituted a form of esoteric knowledge that is simultaneously ubiquitous (“international”) and unknown. Through a series of interventions (“operations”), instructional videos, photographic references, training objects and text, C.O.M.A. engaged in “extreme, hermetic depth research into psychophysical possibilities for evolutionary emergence…operatives attempted to embody primary states of reception and transmission in an effort to open radical possibilities underlying all acts of communication and thus, all forms of individual and social organization.”
Exhibition History:
Reception, Sandroni-Rey Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (solo)
200 Training Operation (Revival), Baum Gallery, University of Central Arkansas, AR (solo)
2000 LA Edge Festival, Park Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Art & Architecture Building, Yale, University, New Haven, CT