{"id":216552,"date":"2025-10-21T23:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T23:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/216552\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T23:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T23:28:13","slug":"in-global-fascisms-artists-tackle-ai-trump-and-authoritarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/216552\/","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018Global Fascisms,\u2019 Artists Tackle AI, Trump, and Authoritarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn 2016, Josh Kline debuted \u201cUnemployment,\u201d a series that explored mass joblessness brought on by technology and automation, and the potential end of the middle class. Nearly a decade later, those works are on view in Berlin<\/a> at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Kline\u2019s focus on how unemployment could fuel fascism appears more prescient than ever.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exhibition, \u201cGlobal Fascisms,\u201d brings together the work of more than 50 artists to argue that fascism is not a relic of the past but an active, contemporary force in global culture and politics.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"BERLIN,<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAround the world, there is a glaring turn toward a dark form of politics,\u201d curator Cosmin Costinas writes in an opening essay. \u201cFascism is here and it is everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFascism, Costinas continues, \u201chas always manipulated aesthetics.\u201d The exhibition examines the ways fascism has been made to appear attractive in public discourse, from its glorification of the past to its use of technology. Artificial intelligence, in this reading, becomes \u201cthe ultimate tool of nostalgia,\u201d as it draws \u201centirely\u201d on the past to perpetuate itself<\/p>\n

\n\tThe growing threat of AI gives new resonance to Kline\u2019s Unemployed Journalist (Dave), the first work one sees in the show: a fetal-positioned figure, encased in a recycling bag, representing job loss and disposability. The 3D-printed sculpture depicts an American journalist who lost his job when his publication\u2019s staff attempted to form a union, prompting Kline to question the transformation of human beings into human capital.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI often think about this phrase \u2018human capital\u2019 and what that means when you turn people into resources,\u201d he told ARTnews. \u201cIf people become resources, then that capital can be spent, used up, and discarded like other forms of waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe context around the work has changed in the intervening years. Now, Kline said, he thinks of the \u201ccreatives losing their jobs\u201d in Hollywood and elsehwere to AI video and image generators like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and others.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe context around the work has shifted in the intervening years. Now, Kline said, he thinks of the \u201ccreatives losing their jobs\u201d in Hollywood and elsewhere to AI video and image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. That idea of disposability runs through Desperation Dilation, where a shopping cart overflows with silicone and plastic sculptures in trash bags, echoing scenes Kline has witnessed in New York and Hong Kong, where \u201cdesperate people in poverty are collecting cans and other things for recycling to make very small amounts of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was thinking about what it means for society to reduce people to scavengers in this way. I found it deeply troubling,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat kind of society forces its elderly to collect recycling goods for pennies?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tG\u00fcls\u00fcn Karamustafa, Window, 1980. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of the artist and B\u00fcroSar\u0131gedik, Salt Research, G\u00fcls\u00fcn Karamustafa Archive<\/p>\n

\n\tThroughout \u201cGlobal Fascisms,\u201d artists respond to the rise of fascist ideologies through a variety of media: painting, film, performance, publications, and digital formats. Historical artworks draw connections between past and present understandings of fascism.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe work of G\u00fcls\u00fcn Karamustafa, a 78-year-old Turkish artist, anchors the exhibition as a living testimony of surviving fascism. In the photograph Stage, Karamustafa and her husband stand in court awaiting a prison sentence after being arrested during Turkey\u2019s 1971 military coup. Their crime, she told ARTnews, was hiding a person the police were looking for. She spent six months in prison; her husband spent two and a half years. In the work, a rotating projection overlays the photo with the words \u201cstage, control, regime, ideology,\u201d calling to mind a searchlight over a prison yard.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis really sums up the ideology of the time,\u201d she said. The work was first shown at HKW in 1998. Nearly thirty years later, it is just as relevant.<\/p>\n

\n\tKaramustafa\u2019s earlier works, like Soldier and Window, extend her reflection on turbulent times in Turkey in the 1970s and \u201980s into domestic and social spheres, depicting familial tension and separation. Her newest work, Reminder (2025), commissioned by HKW, is a 25-panel mural commemorating the first 25 years of the 21st century through protest imagery, calling for history not to repeat itself.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe omnipresence of technology and surveillance links works across the exhibition, from Karamustafa\u2019s historical pieces to Kline\u2019s future-minded ones. The work of Julia Scher also picks up this theme with her installation, Danger Dirty Data, Tell Your Story (2025). This installation uses repurposed surveillance cameras to engage visitors at the entrance to the Global Fascisms exhibition, while a CCTV set up invites the viewer to interact by creating their own data-narrative on a keyboard. Kline said he feels a sense of connection and kinship between his work and theirs.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe site of the exhibition also carries resonance, given Germany\u2019s history. Kline said the Weimar period figured heavily into the creation of the Unemployment works, as mass unemployment during the interwar period is considered by historians to have been a major factor in sending \u201cthe destabilized working and middle classes into the arms of Hitler,\u201d in Kline\u2019s words. This is the first time the works will have been seen in Germany.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was also making these works during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump was running for the first time,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were already these very disturbing images of Trump rallies, very reminiscent of fascist rallies during the Second World War. And what led to the rise of Trump in the U.S., too, was the destabilization of the blue-collar middle class.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith tech executives regularly projecting<\/a> mass white-collar job loss due to AI, Kline said it raises the question of what might happen in the U.S., Germany, or elsewhere \u201cif there\u2019s an even greater population cast into precariousness and poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat urgency runs through much of \u201cGlobal Fascisms,\u201d including the work of Sana Shahmuradova Tanska. Her paintings, all made after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, draw upon different strands of Ukraine\u2019s history, literature, and folklore. For Shahmuradova Tanska, the language of fascism is becoming \u201cless and less sophisticated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJosh Kline, Desperation Dilation, 2016. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto: Joerg Lohse, courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is getting rather literal to the point of absurdity,\u201d she told ARTnews, adding that she examines the absurdity and repetition of fascist methods across different generations.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one work, Negotiations, figures sit at a table. No one has a head and one has already been killed, though they are still seated at a chair. According to Shahmuradova Tanska, the work shows the \u201cstaged and fake presumed presence of the party, the agency of which is not taken into account whatsoever by other members of the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt represents \u201cthe uselessness and absurdity of negotiations with aggressors,\u201d she added..<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile not every work in the show names fascism directly in titles or wall text, the ideology suffuses the exhibition, which Kline said is rare today.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the U.S., I can\u2019t think of a single exhibition that is dealing with fascism directly in a 21st-century context,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tKaramustafa echoed the point. \u201cWe are all talking about a reality which is here and existing now,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery one of us is trying to talk in our own languages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGlobal Fascisms is on view at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin through 7 December, 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2016, Josh Kline debuted \u201cUnemployment,\u201d a series that explored mass joblessness brought on by technology and automation,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,8797,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-216552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-berlin","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}