23/01/2024 – 22/03/2024
Curator: Ana Frangovska
Artists: Elia Kalogianni, Gjorgji Despodov, Kristina Janjić, Sofia Dimova, Valdrin Thaqi
“During a period characterized by dishonesty, speaking the truth is an act that challenges and disrupts the established order.” “Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell.
Post-truth politics and manipulative mainstream media form and frame the visibility horizons in the contemporary world. The concept of post-truth has been a prevalent concern in modern times and has become ingrained in the political landscape of democratic societies. George Orwell, in his dystopian novel “1984”, portrays a society in which the totalitarian regime asserts its control over all cultural and social domains, establishes a distinct language, manipulates historical events, and suppresses those who resist the government.
At different times in history, different modes of visibility are created by power to control society (Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish”, 1979). Because of this, governments and other powerful groups often create the technology of a disciplinary order, to control what people see and how they experience the world. When we talk about increasing exposure (visibility) as a form of political acknowledgment, isn’t it a word about shaping and re-shaping the Truth? How many levels of Reality (Horizons) can we talk about and how do we accept and select what is Truth and what is False or Spin?
The many visibility horizons can be emphasized by showing how artists change the way people experience and sense information, which lets people decide what they see and what they don’t see, what they consider as Truth and what as Post-Truth. The selected young artists from the region, participants in the Visibility Horizon project, including Kristina Janjić – Serbia, Sofia Dimova – Bulgaria, Gjorgji Despodov – North Macedonia, Elia Kaloganni – Greece and Valdrin Thaqi – Kosovo, work with different perspectives of the “Visibility”, discussing about history, politics, sociology and communication, mass-media, consumption, society matrix, power, ecology, theory, knowledge, fusion of horizons etc. Their works, realized in various media, from installation to moving image, video animation, transdisciplinary works, explore the various problems of transmission of information and knowledge and their mediation in today’s contemporary societies, from facing the Reality, to consumption of fake or reshaped Truth coming from different parts of our socio-political habitus.
Ana Frangovska