State of Concept present “Notes on a European Language” curated by iLiana Fokianaki. The group exhibition with Eva Kotatkova, Zbynek Baladran and Thomas Svodoba, is the second instalment of an exhibition chapter dedicated in current European crises, that started with Jonas Staal’s “After Europe” in June and will end with Alexander Tovborg’s “The rape of Europa” in November.

“Notes on a European Language” comments on violence and power relations through the visual language of film. The three Czech artists presented in this exhibition use different starting points to highlight through their work, one of Europe’s common contemporary languages: that of the propagandistic power of the image. The works aim to visually describe what now seems to be the doomed future of the ideal of “paneuropeanism” translated by a common language that no longer aims to unite but divide European states. In recent years, the voices that supported the “European ideal” have been if not quieter, certainly more ambiguous. What is promoted as a common European direction, is much less relating to the 90s idea of a united Europe that proposed a common agenda of equal rights, freedom of speech, multinationality and mutli-ethnical and multi-religious populations, but rather is a Europe consisting of countries that promote their own economic agendas, protect their interests and a Europe, that now tolerates – if not promotes in certain cases- rhetorics of hate, division and closed borders.

All three films in their own manner succeed in tapping on what was once a political myth of older totalitarian regimes: the use of propaganda via visual tools. Through their testimonies of the propagandistic traits of image, they suggest that these mechanisms of visual language, re-surface in contemporary Europe, validifying recent sociopolitical studies, which have emphasised that these practices are also found in the heart of our democratic societies.

With the supports of Outset Greece.