Performance documentation, 30min,
Talking (about) images project, gallery Kortil, Rijeka, Hrvatska.
The ease and speed of access to information, guaranteed by technology, seems to result in users’ passivity in distinguishing the true from the false and in emotionally linking the images to the reality they represent.
This uncritical and apathetic attitude has been nourished by decades of propaganda, not only by totalitarian regimes, but also by democratic governments, private companies, and even civil society organizations or counter-cultural groups. In fact, today propaganda is no longer the exclusive preserve of those in power, but a means within the reach of all those who have the possibilities – technical and cultural – to manipulate information: in the age of the Internet, therefore, within reach of the majority of citizens. As Colin Moore appointed: “We’re probably touched by hundreds of images every day, all propaganda of one kind or another. Propaganda has helped define our lives, and it’s everywhere now: we just don’t call it propaganda.”
In her work Nika Rukavina chooses to oppose The Illusion of Truth in which people are immersed, to resist the flow of propaganda images, in an attempt to rediscover the ability to truly see.
Text by: Francesca Lazzarini
Talking (about) Images
Images are a universal language. Unlike words, they do not require translations to be read by people in different part of the world, being apparently a limitless tool for global communication. Nevertheless, their interpretation is anything but objective: images are intrinsically ambiguous. Due to their power of persuasion, images play a key function in the capitalist and globalised system: they are vehicles for ideology and one of the main weapons in the struggle over an arena of strategic importance today, the collective
imaginary.
Talking (about) Images explores the role of images in contemporary society. As suggested by the title, the exhibition focuses on images as an autonomous language – images that tell us stories, activate memories, convey emotions, deceive us. At the same time, the show reflects on the potentialities and limits of this language, on its interaction with other means of expression and on the responsibility related to its
production and fruition.
The video and the performance by Nika Rukavina, The Illusion of Truth, is a critique to the propagandistic
and ideological use of images and to the passive reception of their flow.
Text by: Francesca Lazzarini
NIKA RUKAVINA 