Date: 21.11.2017 — 31.01.2018
Beginning: 19:00

The etc. gallery introduces a new exhibition program running from November 2017 to the end of the year 2018. The program focuses on the presentation of contemporary artists experimentally and analytically working with instruments of documentary videos. The research project is called Politics of Truth and its first thematic block has a subtitle Between reality and fiction. The new gallery program will not focus on monthly exhibition projects, as it has been so far, but on individual screenings that will be accompanied by lectures and discussions with theoreticians and exhibiting artists.

Politics of Truth – I. part: Between reality and fiction

Determining the exact boundaries of a document fails especially when you want to define it against fiction. At the same time, it is impossible to rely on the fact that the forms, established as documentary, are guaranteed to be the carriers of true messages. The critical background of the tendency in art described as documentarism taught us to be cautious about the constructiveness of the means by which works of art communicate. We have learned how to keep in mind their manipulative potential and to distinguish when steady formats of information transfer abuse their credibility.

The development of documentary strategies, however, did not end with one historic stage, which represented their boom and rich theoretical reflection. Therefore, the long-term project of the .etc gallery focuses on artistic moves in moving images developed in recent years, where documentary aspects and / or a polemical relationship can be traced to the truthfulness of the information that their authors are working on. The project also touches questions about the position of the artists in terms of the difficult conditions of the media-mediated facts assessment and how they point to the topic of truthfulness in the time referred to as “post-fact”.

Curators: Alžběta Bačíková and Anna Remešová