Propaganda is often presented as a relic from the totalitarian past. Only in the case of contemporary dictatorships, such as those of Putin or Kim Jong-un, is the term still used. But as the project Propaganda Station by artist and propaganda researcher Jonas Staal shows, democracy is not free from propaganda either.
Propaganda Station results from a decade-long research by the visual artist and propaganda researcher Jonas Staal, and takes the form of a panopticon-shaped multimedia installation. The panopticon was a historical prison model that allowed guards to oversee prisoners from a single, central point. It also later served as a metaphor for the “big brother” effect of omnipresent surveillance in contemporary society.
When you enter this installation, you enter a reversed panopticon. Here it is you that surveils the propagandist. In each of the surrounding cells of the Propaganda Station, you can see a specific contemporary propaganda model active in democracies today: from liberal propaganda to financialization propaganda, and from alt-right propaganda to climate propaganda. The installation further includes a “Propaganda School,” that hosts a discursive program of workshops, reading groups, screenings, and talks to study contemporary propaganda and develop alternative models of (counter)propaganda.
Propaganda is not merely concerned with sending a message; it is the practice of world-making. If we want to change the world, we will need to understand how contemporary elite propagandas shape our present reality. This is necessary in order for us to collectively propagate a different reality rooted in deep democratization, wealth redistribution, and colonial and climate reparation. As such, this installation challenges us not only to critique cases of propaganda as they exist but to contribute to imagining and making a new emancipatory propaganda of our own.
The exhibition will be opened on September 5 at 6 p.m. with an introductory session of the Propaganda School focused on “emancipatory propaganda,” with contributions by Jonas Staal, Beti Žerovc, Igor Grubić, and Zdenka Badovinac. The program of the Propaganda School will proceed for the duration of the exhibition in collaboration with Petra Matić, Majd Nasrallah, Inicijativa za slobodnu Palestinu, Branka Stipančić, Sanja Horvatinčić & Lujo Parežanin, and the curatorial collective BLOK.
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Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, democracy, and propaganda. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing). Together with Florian Malzacher he co-directs the training camp Training for the Future (2018-ongoing), and with human rights lawyer Jan Fermon he initiated the collective action lawsuit Collectivize Facebook (2020-ongoing). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021-ongoing) and with Laure Prouvost he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union.
His exhibition-projects include Museum as Parliament (with the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2018-ongoing), We Demand a Million More Years (Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2022) and Extinction Wars (with Radha D'Souza, Gwangju Museum of Art, 2023). His projects have been exhibited widely at venues such as the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, V&A in London, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, M_HKA in Antwerp, Centre Pompidou-Metz and the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, as well as the 7th Berlin Biennale, the 31st São Paulo Biennale, the 12th Taipei Biennale and the 14th Shanghai Biennale.
Staal authored the books Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (The MIT Press, 2019) and Climate Propagandas: Stories of Extinction and Regeneration (The MIT Press, 2024) and he completed his PhD research on propaganda art at the PhDArts program of Leiden University, the Netherlands.
Project team: Jonas Staal (artist); Jasna Jakšić (curator and co-programmer of Propaganda School Zagreb); Nadine Gouders (coordinator Studio Jonas Staal); Paul Kuipers (architect); Remco van Bladel (graphic design); Aleksandra Mudrovičić (graphic design); Ruben Hamelink (camera and video editing); Mirta Jurilj and Janko Pukanić (translation).
In partnership with: Jindřich Chalupecký Society, Prague (Karina Kottová), FRU – Faculty of things that can't be learned (Ivana Vaseva and Filip Jovanovski), MSU Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Museum of the Commons and The Arts of Resistance
Supported by: Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam, Netherlands, City of Zagreb, Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia; co-funded by the European Union within the scope of the international project Islands of Kinship – A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions
