Visionary Rumor, Roswell Museum, Roswell, NM, 2023
In Carl Jung’s final book Flying Saucers, he describes the UFO phenomenon as a “visionary rumor.” Jung’s variation differs from an ordinary rumor in that it owes its existence to and is kept alive by visions that are frequently experienced collectively, is corroborated by multiple individuals, and is preceded by an “unusual emotion” emanating from a deeper source which intensifies and flashes into seeing. Whether emerging from physical reality, a distortion of physical phenomena, or an entirely subjective hallucination, these visions, by virtue of their strangeness and intensity, disseminate through stories that parallel preexisting narrative traditions and structures, crisscrossing and spilling into geopolitics, cultural histories, and ecological systems.
The Southwestern United States is especially rich in visionary rumors. During his time in the Roswell Artist-in-Residence program, Alex Boeschenstein has made inquiries into this Southwestern uncanny: where it emerges from and how to articulate latticework representations of it as conceptual aids. Here, the horizon enfolds you, the sky feels like a vast dome placed over the earth, the stars shimmer at you like an accusation, and so much is beautifully visible—an elaborate black box supported by baroque systems of secrecy circumscribes the landscape and the sky.
Through prints, drawings, and murals, Boeschenstein’s exhibition ratchets this tension by conflating the conventions of documentary photography, graphic novels, astrological infographics, and x-ray imaging. The patchwork archive of nuclear weapons laboratories, missile testing ranges, abandoned airfields, wartime geoglyphs, radio telescopes pointed toward black holes, mountains holding the alleged treasures of early pioneer grifters, yuccas growing in the charred aftermath of the first atomic bomb test, and mysterious lights in the sky conspire to broadcast an amalgamated vision of the Southwestern uncanny.
