Talks
Inke Arns
Down the rabbit hole of The Alt-Right Complex: artists exploring far right online culture
21 February 2025, 6pm
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How can artists address the alt-right – without the risk of platforming ideas connected to this toxic (sub)culture? The lecture claims that if we refuse to examine and learn from the groups to which we are opposed we will not be able to read their message. Silence is not an alternative; however, if we engage in reading and learning we must make sure that, while facing the risk of repeating and displaying toxic content, we stay on our side of the thin line. The artists in the exhibition The Alt-Right Complex (2019) – the first of its kind in Germany – make hidden ‘alt-right’ networks visible – like 4chan’s right-wing meme culture – by providing a close reading of ‘alt-right’ visual tactics and by mapping and analysing ‘alt-right’ online (sub)culture. The project’s ambition was to present a vision of the effects of the visual and ideological architecture of the ‘alt-right’ to a broader audience to open spaces and opportunities for critique and resistance.
Inke Arns, PhD, director of HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, Germany (www.hmkv.de). She has worked internationally as an independent curator and theorist specializing in media art, net cultures, and Eastern Europe since 1993. After living in Paris (1982-1986) she studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–1996 M.A.) and in 2004 received her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin.