“Collateral Magic“ is an interdisciplinary body of work aimed to provoke critical dialogue about the historical role of propaganda and illusion in shaping American reality.

The immersive installation conceptually revolves around my publication: “Collateral Magic, How the CIA Conjured Democracy” created in collaboration with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler. The book satirizes a mid-century how-to-magic book, detailing the history of the CIA as if it were magic tricks. Its inspiration stems from the very real “CIA Manual for Trickery and Deception,” an instructional field guide teaching operatives sleight-of-hand techniques, written by early television magician John Mullholland. Mulholland was recruited by the CIA at a time when The Agency was employing everything from LSD to magicians and psychics to gain Cold War advantage.

The exhibition features 6 lenticular prints alongside an animatronic fortune-telling machine that spits out psyop leaflets as “fortunes” and a series of satirical “Magic kits” expanding on “tricks” from the book. The space will be clad in floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains and a fog-drenched floor, to elicit the feeling of stepping inside a retro Zoltar fortune-telling arcade game.  

Each lenticular print references a different aspect of stagecraft illusion: vanishing acts, sleight-of-hand, conjuring, mentalism, rope tricks, and creating an atmosphere of magic. A photographic image–where magician hands interact with stage props–is overlaid with collaged imagery of real-world propaganda related to each theme. 

The exhibition explores performative “magic” as an aesthetic, material vocabulary and metaphor for how propaganda can deceive and manipulate the public.