Collectivize Facebook

JONAS STAAL

What role does an artist have in shaping the future? Art is often expected to ask critical questions and hold up mirrors, be ambiguous, and not speak out unequivocally about social issues or what the world should look like.

When art does this, it is often quickly dismissed as propaganda. Artist and researcher Jonas Staal argues that artists should engage with the political issues of their time.

Staal: ‘In popular culture, we see a tsunami of apocalyptic future scenarios, and authoritarian regimes propagate concise stories that advocate for a return to a mythical era that never existed but that they present as an ideal future.’

Staal wants to oppose this and shows with his work Collectivize Facebook what a more inclusive and egalitarian future could look like: Emancipatory propaganda art as an answer to dystopian propaganda art.