Dedicated to critical cultural production at the intersection of art and activism.

Belgium’s Conflict Room was inspired by Polish artist Artur Zmijewski’s video work Them (2007), wherein he invited politically polarized groups to engage their conflicting ideologies through “communally executed paint-and-paper murals.”

Conflict Room image by Srdjan Stancic

Critical Network describes the work further:

His video documents the ensuing exchanges as they deteriorate from considered alterations to the painted banners of opposing groups to frenziedly burning and hurling the remains of the defaced placards through the window.

Borrowing rather heavily from Zmijewski’s format, Conflict Room gathered artists for a three-month period to explore the nature of conflict through visual arts.  Projects ranged from documentaries concerning post-conflict societies impacted by natural disaster, to differences in visually realizing a text.  Documentation from the 2008 series is online.

Related posts:

1. Yael Bartana’s “Wild Seeds” at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art
2. Play it Cool? In Search of an Ethics and Aesthetics for dealing with Climate Change
3. Porous City: Krzysztof Wodiczko at MIT

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