Savithri Velaga
‘Crop Circle Shooting Targets’ project (attached under portfolio) started with a desire to design something for the explicit purpose of shooting it at a gun range. This impulse was a reaction to the self-seriousness I assumed I needed as a “professional designer”, and was a way to foreground the inherent absurdity in art-making. I then came across an article about the spread of crop circles in the UK, one of the original ‘hoaxes,’ and was reminded of my parents quick descent into Q-Anon and associated conspiracy after the 2020 election. Nothing I or anyone else can say can shake their resolve. They grow more adamant with every piece of counter evidence.

As I began to research different crop circle formations, I thought about the current American conspiracy landscape, and its self-sealing nature: no matter how many holes you poke in a theory, there is a way to explain it away. I vectorized and screen-printed some of my favorite crop circle formations, and made them into shooting targets. I then took them to an air soft range at the Fisherman’s Wharf and shot them with BB gun pellets, an antithetical transfiguration of the self-sealing nature of conspiratorial cognition. Each poster has the added text, “At the bottom of this, will you feel safe?” The phrase is a catch-all to address the frenetic desperation of putting all the pieces together, only to be left with… more pieces.