The hyperabundance of visual and sonic references overwhelms the visitor, confronted with a dense constellation of media fragments drawn from reportage photography, satellite imagery, pop culture, and cinema. These have been collected by the artists over several decades, during which they recomposed such materials to generate new configurations of meaning.

Such a vast archive can be navigated in two ways: as a digger, excavating the individual stories that make up this crowded ensemble, or as an aviator, soaring above it in search of a larger narrative. While the former proves especially rewarding for the encounters it enables, allowing one to discover the frictions of the very tales every fragment tells—be they of resistance, pride, or grief—the latter offers the possibility of orchestrating these impulses into a provisional whole. The result is less a symphony than a glitched choir. Yet stepping back from the specificity of individual experiences makes it possible to situate this constellation of voices within a broader collective narrative, one rooted in American identity itself—the primary target of Helter Skelter’s relentless subversion. The show synthesizes such divergent voices by turning them into a chant, whether of liberation or mourning.

Ultimately, the exhibition provides a platform to inhabit violence without undergoing it, instead taking it as a ground on which to subvert the perspective of white supremacy. Its critique of the logic of oppression rooted in our ‘society of the spectacle’ positions the perspective of the marginalized and racialized groups as the lens through which to overwrite the tales of American culture —whether in the imagery of the Far West or in the icons of rock music—revealing the troubled underside beneath their glossy surface. The curatorial framework, brilliantly staged by curator Nancy Spector, makes its strongest point by confronting the American vernacular as a collective subconscious through which forgotten ghosts may resurface. Here, a post-Duchampian attitude—rooted in the appropriation of images, advertising, myths, and symbols of American culture—constitutes the common ground in which Jafa’s and Prince’s practices emerge, giving rise to an extremely powerful dialogue.