Joseph
Goebbels™ is an art project in the form of a
media campaign dealing with the nature of media and
mass communication at the beginning of the 21st century.
The basic premise is that former Nazi minister of
propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, is the ideological
father of contemporary mass communication.
| The
main visual motif of this campaign is a portrait
of Joseph Goebbels composed of media and communication
company logos. |
During
the thirties the infosphere became a conduit for mass
propaganda. Russia, Great Britain and the USA all
relied heavily on manipulation using propoganda during
this time. However, propaganda was still most closely
identified with Joseph Goebbels and Nazi Germany.
This is due in part to the principles of propaganda
elaborated by Goebbels, and partly due to the nature
of the post-war propaganda itself. If you type "propaganda"
into any search engine most of the results will contain
the name of Joseph Goebbels.
Sixty
years after Goebbels, we find ourselves in a highly
developed infosphere-- the internet, twenty-four hour
news, direct broadcasting, countless non-stop radio,
TV and cable stations, mobile communications, etc.--
which constantly barrages us (its intended recipients)
with messages. There are ads for products, political
programs or activist's ideas, weather forecasts, information
about terrorist actions or fashion trends. The overwhelming
power of the media sometimes gets under our skin,
but we nevertheless remain gluttonous recipients of
the messages. Truth becomes completely irrelevant.
We can freely say there is no truth. In the place
of truth, we consume ideas from a huge marketplace
of messages and narratives that we believe in without
any immediate experience or judgment as to their truthfulness.
As Goebbels might say today, "If you repeat the
message frequently enough it becomes the truth".
From the above, we can derive
the following Joseph Goebbels™ principles:
1.
There is no truth.
2. All information is irrelevant.
3. History and media messages are mere narratives.
4. Truth is what you choose to believe.
The project itself is a continuation
of the web art piece called, "Unstable Portrait
of Joseph Goebbels," which you can see on www.kontrola.co.rs/goebbels.
| Unstable
Portrait of Joseph Goebbels |
|
