Opening @onomatopee

Who told you so?! #1 Truth vs. Government, a set on Flickr.

Untitled (2010-ongoing)

What are the wins and losses when forms of inner conflict are not allowed to represent themselves within the community that produced them? If such forms are suspended, indefinitely denied expressing and consequently to engage communication, the individuals who gave birth to this form are separated from a part of their collective being and consequently cannot take on their social responsibility, causing burdens. Here, the very structure of the society is suspended. As such, what we experience to be our collective identity is constantly closed and unclosed: we cannot access nor assess our collective memory’s archive and lack freedom to interpret who we are. When we talk about suspension, does this always mean elimination? Could it offer not a negative perception, but rather a moment of clarification or alternative to future progress? It is argued that suspension is not only common to the state of emergency but also to emergencies that could potentially arise. Thus suspension is a measure of global dominance and control, and requires alternative type of governance. 

So what are the remains, where are the traces, what are the narratives in this blur of information? How can we uncover our mood boards whilst we experience the social distinctions within ourselves and reconfigure the information cloud we’re part of?

This video installation is part of Who told you so?! first show Truth vs Government

April 14 - May 27

Open Thursday to Sunday 13:00 - 17:00

onomatopee, Eindhoven, NL

Who told you so?! #1 Truth vs. Government

Mode of Suspension is exhibited as part of Onomatopee 75: Research project Who told you so?! The first chapter of the year-long program focuses on the story of Truth vs. Government.

April 14 – May 27 

Open Thursday – Sunday 13:00-17:00 

onomatopee, Eindhoven, NL 

Who told you so?! is the 2012 Research project year-program featuring four group shows, delivering four chapters of social ambiguity. The truth vs. government, organisation, scene and family: about the secularisation of stories of social cohesion through individually processed hybrid flows of information. 

Living through ambiguity and searching for cohesion: this is where we pair up the increasingly hybrid character of the points of reference by which we narrate our personal identities, together with our need for stories that allow us to engage in social cohesion (government, organisation, scene and family) and proceed to confront these traditional social structures. 

The first chapter of Who told you so?! program focuses on the story of Truth vs. Government. The stories that construct our national identities become arguable as they are overrun by an extreme flow of global data exchanges via Internet, social media, travel and migration. Humanity has become global as the stories we deal with on a daily basis arise from everywhere across the globe. We generate our own narration through these in an eclectic manner, intuitively. Identities are configured from the bottom-up, throughout the lively narrations of the multitude. Meanwhile national and supranational governments attempt to offer identities in which we can find cohesion, just as the “European” storyline is trying to postulate something of a Jewish/Christian/humanist body. 

This first chapter takes on the visual and textual narrations that are able to question the official story and help us to produce our individual narrations. They provoke us to doubt the context in which the story of the government presents itself, and allow for speculation and new relationships through which we are able to playfully recount the configuration of the narrative. It stimulates us to go beyond our own pleasantly eclectic narratives as well as the constant stream of “official” stories. 

With: Aleksandra Domanovic (SI / DE), Foundland (NL), Gokce Suvari (TR), Group R.E.P. (revolutionary experimental space) (UA), Lieven De Boeck (BE), Mauro Vallejo (ES), Monika Löve (EE / UK), Slavs and Tatars (INT) 

Curator/editor: Freek Lomme 

Exhibition design: Dave Keune 

Graphic design: Novak Ontwerp 

Made possible thanks to: Municipality of Eindhoven and Mondriaan Fund