“Involuntary Conversion is an ironic and profoundly disturbing commentary on the strategic language of deception used by governments, particularly in the US. Despite being produced over 25 years ago, this video still speaks to today’s politics, offering some sharp insights on government manipulation and misinformation that obviously still prevail.” —Caspar Stracke, transmediale

This apocalyptic linguistic comedy meditates on the relationship between language, meaning and social decay and is scripted from “double-speak” language found in a variety of media sources.  Drawing its title from the Pentagon’s term for crash, Involuntary Conversion evokes the hollowness and free-floating anxiety that characterizes late 20th century culture.  In a voice that could belong to a hypnotist or a government spokesman, a disembodied speaker recounts a string of events whose common thread is a sense of impending disaster.  The mood is suspended somewhere between nightmare and deadpan and is propelled by a narrative as enigmatic as the language it exposes.  The iconic shape of a fighter jet floating in a perfect sky has the creepy feel of a video game and the texture of television is used to make the images feel domestically ingrained.