“An artist is a bloke who can hold two fundamentally opposing views and still function: who dreamed that one up?”

John le Carré,
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Double agents—those figures who hide and twist their allegiances to cross over to the other side—have always been a trope of intelligence work, both real and fictionalized. These are figures who appear to betray their origins in their pursuits—of money, of honor, of morality. Though they appear to only work for one party, their position necessitates navigation of both. They work in a mode comparable to that of Subversive Affirmation in the Soviet Bloc, an artistic method which curator Inke Arns and historian Sylvia Sasse define as a “tactic of resistance through the apparent affirmation of—and compliance with—the image, corporate identity and strategies of [agents’] opponents.” They take on a position wholeheartedly, participating so as to subvert it. To be a double agent is to occupy contradictory vectors within a system, following the letter—if not the spirit—of the rules of both sides, to reveal the inner workings of one.

Abigail Raphael Collins and Julia Weist are double agents. They infiltrate government systems, and look closely at how they structure our realities. These systems become both source and material for their practices. Their films—tracking, documenting, and investigating the actions of various government agencies and their relationship to the arts—are the product of their intimate entanglements and their adoption of insider methodologies. Where they work as artists infiltrating government bodies, their work calls attention to an inverse history: that of the United States’ government’s sponsorship of, collaboration on, and selective censorship of cultural production, particularly in the context of Hollywood. They act as double agents for us, making work to reveal the absences that we don’t know exist. Their process evokes a question raised by Peter Sloterdijk: “Who is subjectively, objectively, implicitly, and explicitly whose agent, functionary of which link in the system, helper of which tendency?” In the case of Collins and Weist, they are agents for those on the outside, making work that might point towards methods of investigation, of close looking, and of political engagement.

This screening will feature two films by Weist and one by Collins, followed by a conversation between the artists and curator Ray Camp. Double Agents is organized on the occasion of the exhibition False Sponsor at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard).