The age of cognitive extraction is here.

Always has been - and yet we are coming to a moment of runaway capacity in data harvesting, cognitive science and algorithmic surveillance capitalism that will put the prior modes of domination to shame. Weaponized media bombardment, predatory social media algorithms, surgical ad profiling, LLM “one-shotting” converge into a generalized crisis in consensus reality that leaves individuals and communities increasingly vulnerable.

Cognitive Security(or cogsec) is poised to enter center stage in the discourse as these forces converge on the human mind as the final frontier of control and accumulation.

This raises complicated questions, as the subject of cognitive security (a term sometimes used interchangeably with cognitive liberty or cognitive sovereignty) becomes, under close examination, a floating point. How can one speak of a “cognitive sovereign” when withdrawal from external stimuli quickly leads to insanity and depersonalization? If cognitive health entails embedding within a mesh of inputs and relations, how does one distinguish healthy inputs from destructive ones? And what of limit points: flow states, rapture, ego death, “losing oneself” - when should they be desired, when should they be feared?

The Open Machine Mindf*ck Movie Club exists to incite a monthly conversation around the problem of cognitive security and technology: What can we learn from cinema about technologies of escape? And transcending the reactive mode: what can we learn from these virtual investigations into exotic experience about how to construct active technologies of cognitive expansion? What kind of world could we live in?

Join us online on third Thursdays at 7:30pm PST for a discussion of our Movie Mindfuck film of the month. We will watch the film together with an accompanying group chat from 5:30-7:30pm (or slightly earlier/later if the film requires), then enter a video call to discuss the film at length. Async participation by written reflection or voice memo is always welcome (if watching/messaging in before the group viewing, no spoilers!).

Together, let’s figure out how to unfuck our minds!

Current film pool (always growing) Tetsuo the Iron Man, Enter the Void, Skinamarink, Annihilation, Brazil, Tenet, Inception, Arrival, Paprika, Solaris, A Scanner Darkly, Sorry to Bother You, The Matrix, Atlantics, Upstream Color, Neptune Frost, Blade Runner 2049, Alphaville, Space is the Place, Possession, The Witch, Holy Motors, A Field in England, Her, The Lighthouse, Mad Max: Fury Road, Existenz, Strange Days, Weapons, Eddington.

Join us on Thursday April 16th for our first film, Weapons.

Start watching in Group chat: 5:15pm PST

Group call for Salon: 7:30pm PST (video optional)