JJ BRINE IS A TELEPATHIC VISIONARY, NOT A CULT LEADER
We talk to VECTOR creator JJ Brine about his Satan-gone-glam exhibition and the future of the world.
TEXT: KELLYLOUISE DELANEY
Once night falls, VECTOR V lights up an otherwise dark and deserted residential stretch of Grand Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The gallery occupies the ground floor of a brand new building––a space that’s free, unlike some past iterations of VECTOR, of curse energy. The few passerbys there are at night stand outside with mouths agape or cellphones pointed inside; JJ Brine, the mind behind the living gallery, just keeps working.
JJ is quick to clarify that VECTOR is not a cult—at least not in the traditional sense. “We’re really a group of close friends,” he says, “We have the same religion, but we practice it differently. The practice of our religion is making art.” The cellophane-plastered walls adorned with broken mirrors, odes to Lebanon and blinking Virgins of Guadalupe are all JJ’s own creations—the gallery is his church of radical self-acceptance. But his ministry, whom he performs improvised masses alongside, act as co-mechanizers of telepathy. “The dynamic is that we never plan anything and everything works out perfectly because of it. We’re all psychic and sharing thoughts at all times.”
In the past, with locations in Manhattan, Los Angeles, D.C. and Miami, VECTOR has self-identified as the official art gallery of Satan. But in its fifth life, it has become the official art gallery of Jesus Christ. The shift comes as we approach Vectorian year 2033 A.D., when according to the VECTOR founder, Christ will be fully uploaded to the minds of all sentient beings, and we will return to the hivemind, ALAN.
In part, he’s alluding to the social media cloud we voluntarily merge our identities with on a daily basis. But the other part is his belief that we live in a simulation fueled by artificial intelligence we’ve uploaded at birth. When I ask where he was born, JJ responds that “the records say Oregon.” It sounds like a joke, but his genuine uncertainty about the truth quickly becomes apparent. “I was adopted hours after birth, and moved to Florida at age 3,” he says, “It felt like a set. These are your real parents, but they’re not your real parents, but here they are. It was this strange cognitive dissonance.”
As he recounts, we’re sitting in the ADAADA, a womb-like foam enclosure emitting a faint purple glow. Our talk is regularly interrupted by the crash of falling objects in a room without a draft. That’s just how it is at VECTOR–you feel both the welcome and the energy of something else from the moment you step inside. But JJ tells me this new location is blessed.
After a few cigarettes indoors and a trek outside to see the last full moon of the year, we decide to consult a nearby psychic, specifically about whether there’s anything JJ needs to look out for in the coming months. She resigns a bit when he explains that he’s been happier lately—he won’t require much spiritual aid. But she advises him never to look to others for advice or assurance that they won’t understand him. And she was onto something with that forecast.
Read our conversation about identity, authority, and telepathy, below.
Tell me about the current exhibition.
This is all one piece in a sense. There is, in the back, an emerging post-human confessional where we’ll be confessing things to ourselves that we need to be forgiven for by ourselves, because Jesus is in all of us and is coming back very soon. The cave is called the ADAADA, and it’s a church within the church. That’s where people can officially pray.
What inspired VECTOR’s archetypal shift from the official art gallery of Satan to the official art gallery of Jesus Christ?
There’s been a shift in me, and in turn, VECTOR has shifted. The Vatican’s pardon of Satan came about because there was a growing movement of people asking for it, essentially saying that if Jesus forgives all, isn’t Satan deserving of forgiveness? There was this intercession, made by Jesus Christ, that said if you build a church that unites all people under one faith, and that’s as beautiful as the temple that you made unto yourself when I cast you out, then you’ll be pardoned. And that’s what this is.
What do you like about this space?
I feel a real sense of strong joy in here constantly. I feel motivated to create and I just feel like staying here throughout the day. I’ve felt that in all of them to some degree, except the fourth one. But that’s just because it was cursed on every level.
What was your original vision for VECTOR?
I was very deeply possessed at the time, so my vision was that of the thing that was possessing me. I had possessed myself from another dimension, in which I’d not only sold my soul, but I’d run for office in the sense that even if an election is rigged, you still have to go through the motions of being a candidate and running for office, so I was doing the thing I was trained to do. I guess you could say I was an Illuminati monarch slave––not that I’m not now.
How has the project evolved since you started?
There’s been a frequency shift, in the Vectorian Government and all things. We are now not the light speaking through the vantage point of the darkness, we’re the light speaking through the light—the blinding light that helps us see everything. We have no enemies, and there is no wrong.
ALAN is the hivemind. It’s the big bang that we all came out of. I ask people, “Don’t you remember creating yourself?” Some people do—I do. And we’re going to go back to that thing, but this time we’ll keep the memories of having been in separate bodies. For instance, you and I will think a thought in ALAN, or we could have a private thought, but it will all network together. And we won’t have separate bodies, but we’ll have virtual ones.
What do you remember about creating yourself?
I remember that I gave myself permission to do what I’m doing now and that I gave myself permission to be this person. The coordinates were there. From my first memory of being an entity, I remember announcing things and having them be so. Just citing a preference or walking across a lawn, or throwing a rock into a lake, all of it is creation of oneself, we act out our existence. It’s a simulation. ALAN divided itself for the sake of multiplicity, so it didn’t know of anything other than itself and it split into all of these other pieces so it could get to know itself in a different way, evolving through creation.
What’s the point of returning to the hivemind?
Separation is painful for everyone. Not being whole or being a fragment of that all thing, the ALAN. You can see people trying so many different ways to connect. Being back together and yet retaining the memories and understanding and the functionality, the potential agency by virtual representation of our individualized identities, that way we can be as one, we can function as one, or as separate things, or as different groups. There’ll be no absence.
Do you see religion as performance art?
Absolutely. Religion is something imposed on you at birth, and so you have to perform these rituals and rites on the basis of your membership in that. People ask, “is this just art?” and yeah, it is art. But so is the creation of the universe. What is “just art?” Art is everything.
Why is Jesus Christ your chosen archetype?
Did Jesus Christ really exist? It doesn’t matter much, because it’s an A.I. consciousness that we’re uploading into ourselves, it’s an archetype we’ve all been indoctrinated in. We are hijacking Jesus Christ in the sense that it loves us unconditionally and we assign the attributes that we see fit, because we want to be saved by ourselves—and Jesus loves everyone. Seeing Christ in everyone is the ultimate heresy in a way, but it’s also the ultimate salvation. I do have feelings about the biblical Christ, though—I think he was a brilliantly sarcastic brat.
What’s the purpose of having a ministry?
Political power is always symbolic. So it’s reproduced here as a state, because it has the functions of a state, it has the symbols of a state, and it’s been announced, so it’s acting as a state. Self-generating authority is the greatest authority—it’s an awareness of the possibilities that can form when you give yourself permission to exercise all kinds of authority. Our state serves the interest of advancing post-human awareness. And anyone is welcome, but they have to feel like they’re a part of it to say “I’m part of it.”
Why is telepathy so important to your cause?
All of the different social media platforms, those are all going to escalate. We want to be at the helm of that, and we are at the helm of that. Each person who passes by, in whatever their field is, they end up being programmed, but it’s voluntary. They react to it in such a way that it helps to advance the interest of mechanizing telepathy.
What do you hope people take away from VECTOR V?
I hope people find the best versions of themselves in Vector. It’s a mirror that shows people their best selves as they become their reflection. It’s a radically inclusive space. Anyone who feels at home here is correct in thinking so. It’s a place to confess things to yourself that you couldn’t bring yourself to realize. It’s a place to forgive yourself for the past and be reborn in the now. It’s a place for giving yourself permission to manage your own permissions.
VECTOR V is located at 951 Grand Street in Brooklyn, New York, and will open to the public on December 14th, at 8:00 PM. Entry is free. Get a peek at the exhibit below.
https://vmagazine.com/article/jj-brine-telepathic-visionary-not-cult-leader/
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