Happy new year from Plug In ICA! In collaboration with The University of Manitoba, we invite you to join us on January 15, 2026 at 7PM for a special talk presented by artist Trevor Paglen, with a reception to follow.

Something strange has happened to the world of images. In the era of algorithmic feeds, generative excess, and the attention economy, images have ceased to represent. Instead, they activate. Images have become synthetic stimuli, engineered to provoke targeted perceptual, emotional, and behavioral responses in both humans and machines. They’ve become highly refined mind-altering substances. 'The Lizard People: How UFOs, Magic, and Mind-Control Explain Visual Culture in the Age of AI' traces a genealogy of this shift, linking Cold War mind-control experiments and military Psyops with stage magic, UFO mythologies, and contemporary neuro-AI research to expose the deep mechanisms shaping today’s visual culture.

Trevor Paglen’s work occupies a singular place at the intersection of contemporary art, technology, surveillance and critical inquiry. Paglen has launched an artwork into distant orbit around Earth in collaboration with Creative Time and MIT, contributed research and cinematography to the Academy Award-winning film Citizenfour, and created a radioactive public sculpture for the exclusion zone in Fukushima, Japan.

His exhibitions at major institutions worldwide, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Tate Modern and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have cemented him as one of the most important artists working today on questions of AI, vision and power.

This talk would not be possible without the generous support of University of Manitoba’s Strategic Initiatives Support Fund (SISF), UM Faculty of Arts, UM School of Art, UM Faculty of Architecture and Plug In ICA.