Propaganda Theater, Video Study


2023

17:48 min.

Propaganda is not merely about sending and manipulating a single message, but aims to construct new realities as such. Propagandists are not interested in operating within an existing reality, but they want to create new worlds. And propaganda can as such be understood as a “performance of power”: the performance of infrastructures of mass communication combined with the visual, narrative, performative and theatrical means needed to “stage” a new reality.

Following these principles of propaganda analysis, Propaganda Theater showcases a hybrid collection of examples of propaganda’s staging of new realities: from Vladislav Surkov, a dramaturg, that became a central ideologue to script Vladimir Putin’s doctrine of “sovereign democracy,” to the massive theatrical pre-staging of wars by the US military in Fort Irwin. The video shows how artists, filmmakers, game designers, architects, literary writers, theater makers and other cultural workers, form an essential part to make the scripts, stages and mass performance of contemporary propaganda theaters a reality.

  • WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY

    Jonas Staal


  • NARRATED BY

    iLiana Fokianaki


  • COUNSELLED BY

    Karina Kottová


  • SCRIPT EDIT

    Isabelle Sully


  • CAMERA

    Ruben Hamelink


  • FILM EDITING AND SOUNDSCAPE

    Ruben Hamelink and Jonas Staal


  • VOICEOVER RECORDING AND EDIT

    Kostas Ekelon


  • MODELS

    Joost Huijzer


  • TITLE DESIGN

    Remco van Bladel


  • IMAGE ADJUSTMENTS

    Ernie But


  • PRODUCTION AND COORDINATION ASSISTANCE

    Veerle Driessen


  • COMMISSIONED BY

    Jindřich Chalupecký Society, Prague


  • IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

    Faculty of Things That Can’t Be Learned (FR~U), Bitola, Macedonia (Ivana Vaseva and Filip Jovanovski), MoCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia and MSU Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia (Zdenka Badovinac).


  • SUPPORTED BY

    Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam, Netherlands; co-funded by the European Union within the scope of the international project Islands of Kinship, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Ostrava, and the State Cultural Fund of the Czech Republic.




    • Propaganda Theater, Video Study


    2023



    • 17:48 min.

    Propaganda is not merely about sending and manipulating a single message, but aims to construct new realities as such. Propagandists are not interested in operating within an existing reality, but they want to create new worlds. And propaganda can as such be understood as a “performance of power”: the performance of infrastructures of mass communication combined with the visual, narrative, performative and theatrical means needed to “stage” a new reality.

    Following these principles of propaganda analysis, Propaganda Theater showcases a hybrid collection of examples of propaganda’s staging of new realities: from Vladislav Surkov, a dramaturg, that became a central ideologue to script Vladimir Putin’s doctrine of “sovereign democracy,” to the massive theatrical pre-staging of wars by the US military in Fort Irwin. The video shows how artists, filmmakers, game designers, architects, literary writers, theater makers and other cultural workers, form an essential part to make the scripts, stages and mass performance of contemporary propaganda theaters a reality.
    Propaganda Station Exo-Ecologies
    Studio Jonas Staal, Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 2005 – 2023