Cultural Counterintelligence
Psychological Operations have become a vital part of the broad range of political, military, economic and ideological activities used to secure national objectives or private interests. Intelligence Professionals insist on the efficiency of the manipulation methods: "By the application of sound PSYOP techniques, through face-to-face communication or media communications, it has been demonstrated, time and time again, that the appeal to the intelligence, reason, and emotions of the target audience gets them to think and act as desired."
Intelligence is the virtual substitute for violence in the Information Society. Counterintelligence (CI) requires systematic, detailed examination or inquiry and is concerned with identifying and counteracting intelligence manipulation by services, organizations, or individuals. Targeting the information environment includes influencing culture, the cognitive industry and the artistic domain to manipulate the emergence of esthetic norms and symbolic gestures. In a conflict of resistance to zombie culture it is understood that traditional art can no longer be justified as an activity to which one could honorably or usefully devote oneself. The increased morbidity of this cultural battle space will add to the importance of stealth, mobility, dispersion and pursuit of a higher operational tempo. The artist as a reality hacker is a cultural intelligence and counterintelligence operator for what should more appropriately be considered parallel or hidden cultures instead of the common terms "underground" or "marginal". In a world filled with propaganda alleging its existence Cultural Intelligence methods against monopolization of perception and the homogenization of cultural patterns have developed to a variety of techniques. Pre-existing elements in society can be used to evoke a meaning that was not originally intended in these elements and by transformation bring about an entirely new message that reveals the underlying absurdity of the spectacle. But not only the practice of subvertisement, culture jamming, semiotic counterterrorism, collective phantoms, media invasion, autonomous space exploration, all known means of artistic expression need to converge in a general movement of counter-propaganda which must encompass all the perpetually interacting aspects of social reality.