Lightning and low grey clouds. Brave
riders. With courage. What a romantic
and hopeful picture in the 70s.
The viewer's view of this apocalyptic
scene was a view from the outside, from
far away, or at least far enough away.
How the view on the future has changed.
Today we are no longer watching the
storm - we are riding it - we are the
storm - we cause it.
That is why this scene of apocaplypsis was to be captured with a dashcam today. In the past, yes, the storm was caused by the others. Today, we can no longer deny the connection between crisis and our own behaviour.
Many have recognised this and have
already changed their behaviour or
attitude. Just as many ignore
everything, hope that the cup will pass
them by, bury their heads in the sand.
A few turn on full throttle. Extra.
Because there is only one life. Theirs.
And then there are a few who turn every
crisis into a success.
This is
post-modernity. It is determined by
plurality.
Our Western plurality
refers to the multiplicity of life
realities or better: to the right of
different life designs as a basic
constitution of society.
Plurality allows for different forms of
knowledge and patterns of action. This
is quite contrary to the great
meta-narratives of modernity, which
aimed at a unity of knowledge and a
uniform truth. But is that still true
today? Can these different life plans be
realised at all? Doesn't it just remain
a promise?
Is there diversity of
opinion and a culture of debate?
Riding the Storm means being alert.
But it also means necessarily
disobedience, breaking the rules,
refusal and this means resistance.
So
our view of the future has changed -
shaped by our concerns about an all in
all incomprehensible world. Yet we lack
a shared assessment of the situation.
For the more unjust and chaotic the
world becomes, the clearer it becomes
how polarised we are. For the struggle
for resources and power is rooted in our
own individual greed. A trap we have set
for ourselves.
Theoretically we know it: an image is not an unquestionable guarantor of past reality. Images unfold their own dynamics.
The
project Riding the Storm delves into this
tangle of pitfalls, challenges, promises
and hopes of our "post-modern" life. The
romantic image of the apocalypse from
the 70s has not been able to hold up in
the flood of events of recent years. But
the events became a flood of data. And
we thought they were just pictures.
But every current situation triggers
new consequences. Unmanageable. The only
victory of globalisation. The individual
thought and still thinks of himself as
helpless, powerless. A pity. An unused
potential.
Because the struggle for resources
and power has its roots in our own,
single, individual greed. The more
unjust and chaotic the world becomes,
the clearer it becomes how polarised we
are. We lack a common assessment of the
situation.
This present work,
entitled RIDING THE STORM, is presented as fictional, fake and fact-based information that moves between the romantic image of the apocalypse from the 1970s and the flood of data on the current situation. Using videos and images generated by algorithms, the work illustrates the absurdity of the global situation, but also describes the small actions of individuals that feed the storm we are in...