Aggression

Marc Bijl, Stefan Burger, The Centre of Attention, Brice Dellsperger, Tom Ellis, Joep van Liefland, Alex McQuilkin, Laura Parnes, SIS.TM, Sündikat, Alejandro Vidal

October 21 - December 2 2007

Herbert Marcuse sees an incessant aggressive surrounding of contemporary opulent society in which there is a yawning gap between established models of existence and the real possibilities of human freedom. The society’s repressive tolerance leads to stress, tension and inequality and finds its expression in local conflicts. Via the pressure to conform and be normal, a historically entirely new and institutionalized access to their subconscious, people are drilled to become functioning consumers: normal body, normal family, normal profession, normal love. If then the history of humanity may be seen as an accumulation of downright destructive power, cruelty and aggression, the question arises as to what opportunities are available to the contemporary social subject or to society as a whole to deal with this aggression, to tame this phenomenon that people are faced with in the hostile environment of a globalized, highly technologized world in which we are suffering day by day the shock treatment of daily news, in which the fears of the end, of catastrophes and the forces of nature are ubiquitous.

Dimitrina Sevova