For me, as an artist working with software CONSPIRE is first about encoding. As an ex-soviet, I perceive CONSPIRE in the same time like a dissident’s practice (an other way of encoding!) and like a monitoring following by manipulation – all kind of secret service’s practice. Because of my ex-soviet origin, I’m extremely impressed with the Berlin’s House of World Cultures. A lot of messages are encoded in this building. American architects and manufacturers consciously encoded some of them. Some others are still present as a trace of bi-dimensional world during the cold war period. They were not consciously formulated by the building’s authors, but I can read all of them, because they are exactly the same, we used to have the other side of our iron curtain.
My proposition for CONSPIRE consists to decode in real time the buildings “propaganda”. CROSSWORLDS installation helps visitors to translate in real time the subliminal information in textual form. I place electronic tags detectable with simple mobile phone in different parts of the building. The ensemble of tags contains the collection of the more spectacular messages hidden in the building’s architecture. The visitor crosses the show like a labyrinth, while seeking for tags. When he’s decoding tag’s messages, I place him into an ironical “dominant” position. He’s exhibited himself like manipulating people in the exhibition space with his “remote control”.
But what kind of messages are encoded into the very impressive architecture of HKW building ? It seems to be, first of all, a message of propaganda of American style of life. This message was stimulatingly formulated by different ways. The most popular one was to deliver it through the Hollywood movie’s industry: “What the people believe is true“. One of the most popular slogans of Soviet propaganda in the same period was “The dreams of the people came true“ – a way to explain to Soviet people that they already got the materialization of the “Hollywood dream”, and that “Each day we live happier!” Susan Buck-Morss gives a detailed analysis of the similitude between Soviet and American propaganda since the twenties to the end of Cold War.
I’ve built a particular protocol to realize my work for/about HKW. I’ve selected some of the most popular pictures from the American and Soviet propaganda. I’ve taken seven American and seven Soviet slogans. I’ve encoded each slogan as an electronic tag composed with two pictures – one Soviet and one American. Each tag has a black part and a white part, it can be decoded tanks to this contrast. The slogans are also composed with threats and promises. In each tag one of two slogans represents it’s black part, another one – the white part.
>>with the support of
FORMICA
interactive installation in collaboration avec Sylvain Reynal
>>shows
Transmediale_Conspire, HKW, Berlin, Germany, curator Natasa Petresin, 2008
>>more
El Pais, Madrid, Spain, January 31 2008, Stefano Caldano, "Teorías (artísticas) de la conspiración", (pdf)/spanish/