5. 11. – 3. 12. 2024
Open Studio: 26. 11. 2024
Residency outcome: 1. 12. 2024
Curator and author of the text: Kristýna Řeháčková
Everything is true, nothing is false, everything is false, nothing is true is an artistic research project by the Romanian artist Diana Paun who lives in Berlin. The project focuses on the exploration of language as a tool of power in our society. It is this theme that deepened Diana’s interest in phenomena such as disinformation, fake news, propaganda, or conspiracy theories in 2023. She has so far conducted her research in Romania and Germany, with her residency at Pragovka Gallery representing one of the first stops on her journey. Diana plans to pursue these narratives across different settings, countries, political regimes, and historical contexts. The aim of her project, however, is not to create a guide on how to avoid falling down the “rabbit hole” of disinformation, but to learn how to talk openly about these political and media narratives, besides other, to become aware of their presence in our surroundings, and to understand their influence on each of us.
Diana compares our current life—overwhelmed by information that no longer affects only our physical surroundings, but also the algorithms of social networks—to Plato’s allegory of the cave. We should not blindly accept information, but subject it to a critical examination / test of reason. Although it seems simple at first glance, most of us do not have the time, will, or reason to verify all the information that comes to us. Moreover, disinformation often exploits our emotional vulnerability—such as fear or panic—which makes it easier to accept.
Diana’s research takes the form of interviews with a wide range of people: from media experts, doctors, and sociologists to so-called vulnerable groups such as pensioners and teenagers. During these meetings, she collects examples of disinformation, fake news, forms of propaganda, and conspiracy theories specific to a given environment, region, or country. However, Diana does not disseminate these collected narratives. Instead, she processes them in two different ways.
The first of these is photography— through it, she captures the aesthetics associated with disinformation narratives, but without transmitting them directly to the viewer. For Diana, photography symbolizes an analogy to disinformation: she works with it, “cleansing! it and searching for its essence or truth. The second way involves music. In collaboration with the Taiwanese musician Shih-Che Lee, who lives in Berlin, she translates disinformation into the form of atonal music. The result is an artistic performance that forms a part of the outcome of her residency at Pragovka Gallery.
Like her photographic work, the multimedia installation at Pragovka Gallery is a metaphor for information processing. The network of threads that form a part of the installation symbolises the complicated web of information that we weave through every day in our search for truth. Each thread in this physical network has its own specific meaning—it represents propaganda, fake news, conspiracy theories, disinformation, misinformation, or personal opinions. Sometimes we navigate this web alone, sometimes we need the help of others. Sometimes we get lost in it, but other times we can discover the connections between pieces of information and get to the heart of it. Yet, the search for the essence is an extremely difficult task, and we cannot blame anyone if they do not untangle the web. Can you untangle it today?
