She’s Evil, Most Definitively Subliminal

In digital culture, subliminals are DIY videos or soundtracks where affirmations lurk beneath the audible threshold, bypassing our conscious awareness and settling into the subconscious. These deceptively simple manipulations—ever-popular online—reflect a broader condition in which software acts as a fascist operating system: a pervasive structure that harnesses subtle cues and algorithmic nudges to perpetually recalibrate our perceptions, relationships, and even our desires.

In She’s Evil, Most Definitively Subliminal, Alex Quicho and Noura Tafeche delve into the theater of online psychological operations—because physical wounds eventually heal—deploying everything from state army e-girls to embedded subliminal strategies. Here, the battlefield shifts from bullets to beliefs, fought through seduction, influence, disruption, and confusion. As the ultimate reprogramming of the mind takes hold, the enemy—or ideology—begins to feel less external and more internal.

Standing at the intersection of warfare and self-development, this lecture-performance poses unsettling questions about how digital platforms shape our everyday. Demonstrating how subliminals, viral aesthetics, and covert messaging can rewire identity and allegiance, Quicho and Tafeche challenge us to consider where battles for our agency and attention truly take place. Through a mix of research, storytelling, and subversion, they reveal how the girl can serve as potent artillery in this new theater of war.

Noura Tafeche’s participation is additionally supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in Ljubljana.