"Beam Me Up" is the ultimate call for oblivion.
From Star Trek's transporter room to the tractor beams of our most fervent UFO nightmares, the very notion of "beaming"—of dematerializing only to reappear somewhere else, somewhere potentially unknown—represents a complete relinquishment of control, as well as a pure acknowledgment of the subjective, relativistic nature of human reality. After all, if you can spontaneously "beam out" of danger, or "beam in" to the frightful recesses of an alien craft, what is there to be said about the here and now? Or the me? To beam is to temporarily cease to exist in space and time, to blink into suspension, and, invariably, to invert the accepted order.
Besides being its namesake, "Beam Me Up" is a very apt starting point for Xcult.org's ongoing global exhibition about space, recently curated by Sarah Cook of CRUMB, the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss. "Beam Me Up" takes place online, an alternative space which, perhaps incidentally, is probably the international human headquarters for the entire "beam me up" sentiment—that fervent, and often delusional, reach toward dreams of conspiracy, government mind control, and alien visitation ("I want to believe!").
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Dr Eugenia Fratzeskou