Nine local and international artists will present their work at HDLU gallery under the joint exhibition Society of Spectacle on Thursday, March 10, with focus on work of the same name by Guy Debord, leading French thinker of Situacionalist Internacionalists and in psychogeography. The artists analyze his ideas and works in today’s context of a society that uncritically indulges in self-spectacle and conscientiously submits its free time to interests of corporate creative and ‘free time’ industries.
The most notable recognition of Situacionalist Internacional in modern culture are Paris student riots in 1968 and Debord’s manifest after which the exhibition is called. Debord was one of the first activists and critics of new forms of explanation and enrichment of peoples trough production, distribution and consumption of images. Spectacle, according to Debord, is not just a collection of images, but ‘a social relationship between people intermediated with images that cannot be understood as a mere visual deception produced by mass media, because it is a world view that materializes itself.’
The artists presented in the exhibition created their works as means, or tools, to awaken the viewers from ‘the Matrix’ of global consumer culture and celebrity-centric consumption of free time, a lifestyle we willingly choose, and one that is aimed at controlling us not just during our working hours, but also during our free time. The exhibition is part of a struggle for development of public criticism, new social and artistic situations and conceptualizations, uprising of alternative artistic and communication efforts in the manner of Guy Debord and his fallowers.
Artists presented on the exhibition are Siniša Labrović, Vlasta Delimar, Martina Miholić, Zlatko Kopljar, Kristian Kožul / Damir Žižić, Khaled Hafez, Gintautas Mažeikis, Luise Kloos and Giovanni Morbin.
Society of Spectacle opens on March 10th, HDLU gallery, trg Zrtava Fasizma, and is opened until April 10th.
