The Passing

Marcus John Henry Brown The Coalition ballroom was packed with four
hundred noisy fifteen-year-olds. Johnston hated every single one of
them. His brand had been slowly slipping for years, and this once
successful education influencer had been reduced to giving the
adult introduction seminar to children on the eve of their Passing.
Had he not be loyal? Had he not consumed double, no, triple the
recommended dosage of Brandsulin and Flucermol? Had he not tried
harder than anyone to build his personal brand?  Johnston
stepped out onto the stage and remained quite motionless until he
was quite sure that he had their undivided attention.  Set in
2059, The Passing is a performance that explores a society designed
by advertising executives, biochemists, spies, startups and fashion
bloggers, the worst possible people to take on building a better
world for us all to live in.  The Passing describes a future
where too much time and trust have been placed in the products of
middle-upper class white men: The Coalition.   These men came
for us: first, they came for our labour, then they came for our
money, then they came for our attention and now they’re demanding
our obedience. They teased us with the tools for fame, fortune and
influence but they hooked us up to compliance and control. In their
world “shopping is freedom”, and influence is king, currency and
law. They’ve built products such as Hot Homes, Bradnsulin and
Flucermol to sedate us and created a nanotech chemical algorithm
called RACHEL - the one algorithm to rule us all. It sounds like
science fiction, but it is all very close to what we’re
experiencing today. We’ve become addicted to being
controlled.  The Passing asks the audience to imagine a much
better future than the one the performance describes. Marcus
genuinely wants us to have a long hard think about the trajectory
that our society is taking and how our relationship with
technology, media and the never-ending cult of influence is
propelling us towards something darker than we have ever known.
  PREVIOUSLY AT THE RE:PUBLICA The Black Operatives
Department/ Collective "Control the hearts & minds of billions
by putting dystopian thinking at the heart of communications". The
Black Operatives Department is a fictitious advertising
agency. Founded in 1956, it works solely for government
organisations and has been responsible for clandestine
marketing operations such as the Bay Of Pigs, Nixon, the Cambridge
Five and Snowden. Marcus uses the agency to describe the world seen
through the eyes of an advertising man: it's a dystopian
world.  The Snowden Pitch - 2014. Marcus introduced the Black
Operatives in his 2014 re:publica talk "The Snowden
Pitch". This talk was set in 2008. The audience: 4 senior members
of the NSA. The Pitch: The Black Operatives Department, had
developed the advertising campaign "An Everyday Bond". The
proposal: unleash a whistleblower into the world and guarantee the
NSA and their surveillance products
maximum visibility within the espionage community.
 The talk explored the Snowden case as a
communications campaign and the world described, defined and
manipulated by data. The talk predicted a cold war renaissance,
cyber war and post-factual media manipulation.  Purpose of
Entry - 2015 Set in 2018, "Purpose of Entry" explored future
Europe's political shift to the right.The Black Operatives had been
briefed by "the Coalition of the Right" to produce an algorithm
that could control the newly developed, sovereign national
internets and fulfil the terms of the "Wasteland Act". The product
they developed was called the Real-time, Algorithmic, Chemical,
Hallucinogenic, Enhancement, Lady, or R.A.C.H.E.L. for short.
 R.A.C.H.E.L. turned the human body in a tracking pixel, spoke
directly to the user and permitted access to certain parts of the
digital world. What could possibly go wrong? Written pre-Brexit,
"Purpose of entry" explored the idea of Neo-Orwellianism and
predicted Europe's shift the right, e-borders, Brexit and the rise
of Bots.