To discover the exhibition Fake News: art, fiction, lies at the EDF Group Foundation, Creative Tech invites you, through the eyes of three works, for a stroll in the land of fake news.
Creative Tech is delighted to have participated in the collective curating of the exhibition, with the wonderful team of the EDF Group Foundation, Laurent Bigot, journalist, professor and one of the great specialists on the subject of Fake News, expert speakers in mediation and professionals from the art world.
Our reflexive path led us early on to think about the subject, so vast, of Fake News. How to handle the substance, exciting, divisive and where it seems to be said so much?
To avoid any bulimia of works and to lead this famous course: Manufacture – Diffusion – Risks and remedies – it is still in the collective that it was necessary to draw. The group gives birth to an exhibition with multiple formats (video, drawing, photography, immersive, interactive, visual installations, …) and levels of discourse that are intertwined.
The artists, both French and international, have composed to the rhythm of fake news. We even have some works produced especially for the exhibition, under the impulse of the collective curatorship in search of singular works with the will to embark more and more Humans in this adventure! Throughout the visit, we also find information provided by journalists and teachers, such as “what is fake news?” and “why do we like to circulate news on the networks? Return on this multidisciplinary excursion through three works (although we assure you that we have no preference!).
Fabrication with G255, by Alain Josseau
After passing the monumental “Fake News” panel at the entrance of the Foundation (made of LEDs by the Vincent Tordjman studio) and its airlock of press drawings by international artists, we discover a projected video of a post-war landscape, ravaged buildings surrounded by rubble. As we progress, the “deception” is revealed with a mini staging device: a camera, a model of the set and the famous green font (the name “G255” is taken from the pantone reference of this criar green which facilitates image overlay).
We then pass the works of Bill Posters and Daniel Howe, The Yes Men, Karl Haendel, Filipe Vilas-Boas, Agnès Geoffray, Cristina de Middel and excerpts from two films: The Mystifier and The Protocols of Rumor.
Alain JOSSEAU, France, G255, 2020, model, computer, electronic control engine, video screens, 150 x 100 x 100 cm, © Creative Tech
Broadcast, with weRfake, by Patrick Suchet
The path interferes between the works of Kevin Lau, Tsila Hassine and Carmel Barnea Brezner Jonas, Samuel Rousseau, Patrick Suchet, Marco Giordano, to consider the phenomena of diffusion, infodemia and human mechanisms (and chemical!) that they trigger. We conclude with a drawing by Pierre Kroll: Coronavirus: Rumors, conspiracies, FAKE NEWS (2020).
We linger on the installation of French Patrick Suchet, set up for the exhibition with the social network called “weRfake”, creation of the artist and computer scientist. Fictitious and parodic, generated through algorithms and the use of artificial intelligence, the installation gives to see in real time profiles of users, their publications and their reactions. The interactions seem so possible, close to a self-fulfilling prophecy where AIs would copy our worst ineptitudes. So do we really know who we are interacting with?
During a visit to the EDF Group Foundation © Creative Tech
Risks and remedies, with #notiTweety 2.0 by Encoreunestp
To conclude the course, we go back down the stairs to dive into a panel of solutions (disconnect, exercise critical power, adopt checking reflexes …) and remedies, more or less controversial. Among the works of Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Chris Bolin, Joan Fontcuberta, Simon Weckert and the drawing of Ale + Ale, we discuss the censorship of networks (or self-censorship?), with #NotiTweety 2.0 by Encoreunestp.
The installation proposed by the plastic artist / streetartist (see the famous Insta’ Mirrors to search in Paris) is surprising, with sculptures all in levitation. Replicas of the blue bird of Twitter that is locked in a cage, satirical tweet hanging from the beak. The idea of censorship, the limits of the power of expression and sharing of social networks is growing and feeds our questions.
The catalog of the exhibition and the newspaper, realized with the CLEMI (Centre de Liaison de l’Enseignement et des Médias d’Information) © Creative Tech
The EDF Group Foundation’s vocation is to summon the art world to address contemporary issues. We salute the initiative of taking a subject like Fake News (or before green energies) to shake up minds. A vast, international theme, extending in history and infinitely declinable. We loved collaborating on this topic, and the result inspires us for the future!
The products of the workshops carried out during almost a year reflect the richness of this collaboration: obviously an exhibition with a proven success from its opening, mediation devices for schools, an exhibition catalog that has its own existence outside the exhibition, podcasts… And we may be preparing an additional surprise for you!