Team Profiles
The Malevenia Analysticians
The Malevenia Analysticians are a potent triumverate that brings together the forces of mind control, black magic, and good intentions. Our team is made up of an ESP prodigy, a Ouija master with undisclosed ties to the government, and a professionally trained assistant with a broad range of mental and physical skills.
Though all well-practiced in the various arts of psychic influence, we vouch for our amateur status, and none of our team, either individually or collectively, have been financially compensated for work on crime scene investigations or appearences on Oprah.
We firmly believe that we must win by defeating our opponents as opposed to pure influence of the candle itself. "It is not the spoon that bends, it is the will of the spoon."[1] While we mock the supposed "power" that most competing teams claim to yield, in circumstances where we have reason to believe that our opponents in any given match control more psychic potential than we, our goal will be to mentally disorient that team so that they are actually directing their energies towards the candle in our favour. Such rivals will thereafter receive a card in the mail stating in no uncertain terms, "Congratulations, you've just been 'Analysticated'."
We play by the rules, but are not above using all means at our psychic disposal to achieve our goals. Though our main objective is to affect control over the game candle, we believe it is our right to use mental influence upon our competitors, the judges and the game site in pursuit of victory. We agree to abide by the restrictions imposed by the meddlesome WTC officials, however there will of course be no way to prove if we have.
We believe in employing all powers available to us, including the powers of symbology, semiotics, and first impressions. Our logo harnesses the power of the multi-trillion dollar inter-stellar dictatorship, giving us access to potent energies that penetrate every inch of the globe through inversion techniques used for centuries, most recognizably in the examples inverted cross and reversed swastika. Again, though we employ professional techniques, this is an amateur association not affiliated with any professional associations with whom we may enjoy several characteristics in common, and our team members are not members of any licensed psychic energy institutions.
The Malevenia Analysticians harness psychic energy through telekinesis, extra-sensory perception, the black magick arts, blackmail, science and technology and, notably, a strong natural women's intuition. Though we are well-practised in the technique of astral projection, we must state our WHOLESALE REJECTION of the very suggestion of so-called "psychic projection" as a valid practice. Any teams claiming to use psychic projection in the pursuit of this prize are laughable and will be easily defeated. Similarly, we deny the possible existence of remote viewing, and those claiming to be remote viewers are frauds and charlatans, and should be removed from this serious competition.
Our group is ends-focused, and we have no compunction to stoop to the dark ends of the psychic realm to achieve our goals. We practice spell-casting, voodoo, superstition and the various lesser-known forms of mind control in addition to our assorted array of socially acceptable mental skills, including trying really hard. To be clear, neither our team nor any members of it are devil-worshippers or Mormon. We reject the Judeo-Christian model in favour of an astral belief system. We reject any attempt to associate us with Clare Danes or her ilk; this is fear-mongering and amounts to no more than sour grapes.
Unlike some of our Canadian colleagues against whom we may be competing, Necornomical Analysticians do not subscribe to the new-agey techniques of yoga, hugging, or thumb-sucking. We believe that those who claim to be the guardians of dreams are not only namby-pamby, but wishy-washy, and will easily be steamrollered over by those with concrete psychic goals.
And while we applaud those who would forge new ground in psychic research, any so-called "serious" investigation into the area of peripheral extensionism is akin to the practice of remote viewing -- both laughable and antithetical to the goals of the field as a whole. Clare Danes, indeed!
Preferred media for our psychic endeavours are technological; though our practice is founded in mental energies we acknowledge the powers of both the media universe and the semiosp here in carrying those mental energies. We are proud of our track record in influencing events via telephone (cellular and landline), videotape, digital camera, email/Facebook, motor vehicle and simple face-to-face conversation.
Notes:
[1] Stormy, Sealab 2021, episode # 17 "Stimutacs".
 |
Interdisciplinary and performance artist Cindy Baker considers context her primary medium, working with whatever materials are needed to allow her to concentrate on the theoretical, conceptual and ephemeral aspects of her work. She considers her art to exist in its experience, and not in its objects. Despite a formal education in painting and printmaking, she considers her non-formal training and research in gender culture, fat activism, queer theory, philosophy and art theory to be as important in her development as a contemporary artist, as well as her training, from early childhood, in magic and ventriloquism. Scoring high on random IQ and ESP tests throughout her life reassure Baker of her superior mental capabilities. Some of Baker's biggest interests are skewing context and (re)examining societal standards, especially as they relate to language and dissemination of information, and she perceives a need for intervention and collaboration, both within the art world and in the community at large. Having been Programme Coordinator at AKA Gallery in Saskatoon since 2000, as well as having worked, volunteered and sat on the board for several artist-run centres, Cindy has a particular professional interest in the function of arts institutions as a breeding ground of deviation. In one of Baker's current projects, Gimmick, she is collaborating with professional magicians, challenging them to create illusions from her impotent sculptural props in front of live art audiences. |
 |
Megan Morman grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota. In 1997 she moved to Canada to study at the University of Saskatchewan, graduating in 2003 with degrees in Sociology and Gender Studies. She has worked as a freelance designer and thing-doer, and is currently the Volunteer Coordinator at AIDS Saskatoon. Megan swears she just wants to help. In her art practice, Megan is particularly interested in art/cultural communities and the ways that group membership is established through storytelling and gossip; other art interests include sidekickery, pixelization, queerness and the ethics of helping. She is obsessed with plastic canvas needlepoint, and is especially fond of art she can make while watching late-night reruns of Star Trek: Voyager. As a teenager, nerdy and desperate for acceptance, Megan was active in several high-IQ societies, including Mensa, Intertel and ISPE. Eager and always prepared, she pledges to use any means necessary to secure victory for her team. Find her online at www.populust.ca/ladylady. |
 |
The world's population has doubled in size since David LaRiviere turned 13 years of age, a statistical factoid that insistently perturbs the artist -- now in his 43rd year. When the human race was half its current size, lensed as it was through the repressive suburbanite catholic rendition of a burgeoning tween-aged sexuality, LaRiviere's notions of art conformed to the mainstream care-free romance afforded to the innocent. This is no longer the case. In more recent history, LaRiviere's guiding interest in identity constructions (as manifest in cultural production) has sustained itself through both undergraduate (University of Alberta) and graduate work (Goldsmiths College). The relevance of such "Degrees" is not felt in the meaningless piece of paper that is conferred, but rather what developed as an attitude untoward "identity" as the strange harbor for what might be termed "our contemporary predicament". Years later, with the aid of various double-identities, www.mkultra-foods.com was launched and further developed by yo mama if you think it that easy and the Department of Unnamed Scienfascist Doublespeakers (USD). The development of a web presence located LaRiviere's work squarely within the ongoing subterranean online investigation into the "conspiracy" of "'conspiracy'", and he has found it wanting. To be sure nutrition constitutes a certain cutting edge of behavior modification technology; this is the good work of MKULTRA-Foods. However high ranking corporate assholes will not be satisfied until every strategy is developed, every stoned overturned, every goat stared at, every spoon bent. Today LaRiviere lives in Saskatoon and works by day as the unassuming Artistic Director of PAVED Arts. By night, becoming radicalized into inertia, the artist has focused on the Ouija, mulling over possibilities while indulging in LSD and electroshock therapy. From the range of such invisible activities, LaRiviere continues to pursue the very essence of Mind-control, the only true control of everything that trickles down. |