The Lensbased community was formed around the multimedia art class at Berlin University of arts, developed under the leadership of Professor Hito Steyerl, and has been taken over by Mykola Ridnyi since 2023. This community includes class students, alumni, friends, and collaborators of diverse national and cultural backgrounds, for whom international solidarity and mutual support matter. Personal evidences and experiences of violence, representations of collective traumas, and complicated relationships with national memories and histories have become subjects of artistic reflection for the exhibition.

 

In the last decade, the world has been shaken by genocidal wars in Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, as well as rising tensions between China and Taiwan, among others. This has led not only to an enormous number of casualties and the destruction of infrastructure in the affected areas but also to massive waves of refugees into European countries. Speculation and manipulation of historical memory often serve as ideological groundwork for modern wars. In the EU, this has resulted in a rise of right-wing powers and a type of violence based on intolerance toward others. It has also created significant polarization between individuals and political groups across a broader spectrum, where the imagery of violence stands as one of the foundational problems and driving emotional forces.

 

The dichotomy between traumatic affection and aestheticization, and the enjoyment derived from attraction, presents a problematic context for image-makers who produce critical reflections on violence, especially for those directly involved in the affecting events. The demand for shocking content continues to rise steadily because it guarantees media popularity, spectacle, and even a form of pleasure. Today’s media have abandoned the notion of actual mediation to control and direct the viewer’s emotional engagement. The problem of dehumanization arises when death becomes a form of entertainment incorporated into political propaganda. This stems from a version of reality where violence plays a central role in the overall design and transmission of a message, driven by the emotion of shock.

 

But can an affect be seen not as a place of emotional loop, but as a possibility or even as hope? According to Brian Massumi, the concept of affect is inseparable from shock but differs from its negative connotations. It provokes “…a change in focus, or a rustle at the periphery of vision that draws the gaze towards it. In every shift of attention, there is an interruption, a momentary cut in the onward deployment of life.” The works in the exhibition address the question of what potential responses could be offered by artistic interventions understood as a dialectical and critical framework capable of confronting and making visible the issue of dehumanization through violence.

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