Opening Friday 8 June, 20:00
On show 9 June - 15 July

This second chapter of Who told you so‽! focuses on the story of Truth vs. Organisation. Stimulated by and parallel to the rise of mass media such as newspapers, radio and television in the early 20th century, people started organising themselves socially, beyond the boundaries of villages and countries. In the Netherlands this resulted in a compartmentalised society, administered top-down by the leaders of the different compartments and regulated by the union representatives, broadcasters the church and so on.

Regardless of the religious secularisation that took place, these models of organisation were able to maintain a base – and therefor power – by slightly adapting the range of their production. As social organisations, they found a new economic basis to empower this, by altering their products from class and religion based into a market based story, which emerged in a left and right political spectrum. At this time, due to the fading of European and globally cultural and economic borders and the emergence of new economies and media, these systems begin to erode internally. The new calls for organisation are conservative or progressive. This overlooks the economic management of the “left” and “right” culture, which should be shaped through public and private investment. There is no body that can provide a basis for the new administration.

What is remarkable is the growing gap between younger generations who are open to the necessary risks of our globalised world, and the older generations who are afraid to lose their accomplishments, as can be identified in the divide between the young and the older segments of labour unions; for example in Spain, where the youth has no future, or in the Netherlands, where a grey wave of elderly people is likely to become a heavy financial burden.

Within this context, the increased presence of purely commercial broadcasting stations – that are dominated by the state in Italy, but unprecedented in the Netherlands until the early 90’s – created a diffuse and distrustful landscape for social recognition and identification, thus giving power to a growing mistrust These commercial platforms do not hold any social representation; they are a body without spirit. Meanwhile, new media add another layer of confusion, allowing everyone to get their voice heard and use their own sources: from the populist and anti Eastern-European Freedom Party blogs, to blogs by Occupy groups. And what did Occupy represent anyway? Is it the post-political mass of undecided voters? Is that the definition of the multitude...?

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With: Azra Aksamija (INT), Elena Bajo (INT), Hank Willis Thomas (US), Heath Bunting (UK), Jacqueline Schoemaker (NL), Job Janssen (NL), Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen (INT), Paul Segers (NL), and Anikó Loránt and Kaszás Tamás (HU).
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project specific poem by Serge van Duijnhoven
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project specific texts by Markus Miessen, Alfredo Cramerotti and Wim Langenhoff
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project specific publications by Jacqueline Schoemaker (graphic design by Arthur Roeloffzen) and Elena Bajo (graphic design by Novak)