A project of the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, curated by Boaz Levin and Marianna Liosi, sponsored by the Capital Cultural Fund.
In January 2011, social protests broke out in Tunisia which soon spread to other Arab states. In the Western media reports quickly circulated with images of protest graffiti, which were cited as coming from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. These pictures are often regarded as evidence of the emancipatory potential of the new media.
While the question of the role of social networks has been intensively discussed in mobilizing protesters, another aspect undergoes little attention. The role of the spectator, who receives of pictures and reports on the uprisings in the internet over thousands of kilometers away. Many pay homage to the social media as inherently emancipatory, while others criticize the voyeuristic nature of the so-called "couch politics". Increasing dependence of representation and media communication of political events and the emergence of virtual communities have played a major role in dealing with the relationship between politics and spectators. The main objective of the exhibition, including its extensive series of events and the accompanying website, is the study of those images and concepts that are associated with the phenomenon of the distanced observer. This figure acts - mediated by cultural artifacts and works of art - as a key to the interpretation of past and future political events.