JONAS STAAL

In 2020, Jonas Staal participated in Taipei Biennial with Steve Banon, A Propaganda Retrospective (2018–2019), which considers former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s documentary films to dissect the mechanisms of alt-right propaganda. The films depict a future frighteningly beset by economic crises, Islamic fundamentalism, and secular hedonism, and propound the idea that only a strong leader can serve as a rampart in defence of family values, Christian faith, military might, and, of course, the US economy.

Instead of presenting a criticism that would deliver blunt blows to the populist leaders, Steve Banon, A Propaganda Retrospective explained precisely what makes this propaganda attractive in order to better understand how it can be countered.

As the artist says,

deconstructing the work of Bannon involves deconstructing the mechanisms of cultural warfare that enable authoritarian governments, and shows us the power of art and culture to construct alternate realities. But it also asks us how we could engage art and culture to create different egalitarian realities, to counter the life-threatening alt-right propaganda of our present.