Artists: Kaja Redkie, Tomasz Mróz, Filip Rybkowski, Małgorzata Biłuńska, Karolina Jarzębak, Inside Job (Ula Lucińska, Michał Knychaus), Aleksandra Liput, Waldemar Borowski, Maciej Nowacki
Title: Pure Crystal
Venue: Promocyjna Gallery
Curator: Dzidy (Aleksandra Liput, Michalina Sablik)
Photo: Bartosz Gorka
The story of the lost Atlantis is present in numerous cultural texts. It served Plato as a parable of a state in moral decline and warning for Athens. Similar stories are evoked by online shamans today who compare the Atlantis culture to our own. Their highly developed society derives its strength from fossil fuels and the allegedly powerful crystals also used in modern technologies in Silicon Valley. For their greed, excessive exploitation of nature and wars, the Atlanteans were punished by the gods by waves of floods and earthquakes which ultimately destroyed their island. According to the esoteric portals, only pure crystals can save humanity from historic recurrence.
Behind the reference to the story of the Atlanteans is an intention to discuss fake news, conspiracy theories and neotribalism that proliferate in the web. We are answering questions about the nature, origin and purpose of modern myths and why we yearn for simple narrative. In the era of environmental crisis, raging neo-capitalism, the pandemic and the growing decadence, we also need myths and urban fables to shake the conscience of the masses. The void is sadly filled by conspiracy theorists and religious radicals. Myths loathe chance. The use simple form to explain the world to people, explicate the rules of nature and plot unexpected and inconceivable events in the ‘mythical world order’
The Internet plays havoc with all narratives, squeezes them into memes, creepypasta and viral frameworks. The social media format distorts time, place and proportions of the news feed. News items are blended with private photographs, jokes, life hacks and trivialises all news and blurs the boundaries of what used to be structured compartments of our life. The format lifts the divide between the past and the present.
Artists presenting at the exhibition display the non-time, fluidity, and reproducibility of online archetypes and myths. They attempt to mythologise contemporary developments. They review the realities, capture news and new narrative and embed them into the structures of the stories and styles of old. They use historicised forms such as pottery, intarsia, fabric blending them with Internet style. They create ‘museum exhibits’ to be displayed at an exhibition after our civilisation has come to an end.
