Ambient Propaganda

Event

Exhibition

Ambient Propaganda

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29 August 2025
— 26 October 2025

12:00 — 18:00

Location: IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture]

Exhibition opening times: Wednesday until Sunday from 12:00 – 18:00.
Guided tour: Saturday 18 October 15:00

Exhibition tickets:
€6,- (Regular), €5,- (Discount CJP, Upas, Student, <18) or €3,- (With Museumjaarkaart)

Tickets

The Ambient Propaganda exhibition explores the shift from the classic “top-down” understanding of propaganda to a new and more contemporary understanding of propaganda as ambient influence, where ideology is subconsciously incorporated into everyday digital culture. From TikTok trends to political fandoms, the works highlight how the boundaries between self-expression, performance, and ideological reproduction have blurred.

On our algorithmically determined and emotionally immersive platforms, belief and conviction are no longer influenced by direct “top-down” messages, but rather by participation: through memes, aesthetics, and performances by influencers that “feel good.” We are caught in feedback loops that are as emotional as they are informative. Meanwhile, global crises—from pandemics to wars—expose how these digital transformations have direct political, social, and even military consequences.

Guided Tour:
On Saturday 18 October, curator Lesia Kulchynska will give a guided tour through the exhibition. The tour starts at 15:00 at the IMPAKT Centre for Media Culture. Buy your ticket in advance, so we know how many people we can expect.

Tickets Guided Tour

Guided Tour and Finissage:
On Friday 24 October, 16:00, the curators will give a guided tour through the exhibition. The tour starts at 16:00 at the IMPAKT Centre for Media Culture followed by a finissage from 17:00 till 19:00.

RSVP for the finissage

Artists
Noura Tafeche deconstructs the aesthetics of cuteness and coercion.
Lesia Vasylchenko explores algorithmic flows shaped by war.
Pedro Gossler examines political identity as fandom.
Total Refusal reflects on the subject of digital control.
Marc Tuters empirically traces the dynamics of conspiracy theories.
Paolo Cirio makes visible the hidden dark patterns of influence.
Dana Dawud, Brandon Bandy, and Fantastic Little Splash probe nostalgia, ideological reduction, and information overload.

Curators: Marc Tuters, Lesia Kulchynska & Boris Noordenbos

Image: Noura Tafeche, Annihilation Core Inherited Lore (2025)

Flaming Hot Mountain Dew Damaged in Shipping, Devirtualized

Brandon Bandy (2021 - 2025)

Infocry

Fantastic Little Splash (2024)

Their Globalist Agenda

Marc Tuters (2025)

Fanfictional Politics

Pedro Gossler (2022)

Annihilation Core Inherited Lore ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶

Noura Tafeche (2025)

Tachyoness

Lesia Vasylchenko (2022)

Night

Lesia Vasylchenko (2025)

Club Stahlbad

Total Refusal (2023)

Sociality

Paolo Cirio (2018)

Palcorecore

Dana Dawud (2023)

Political Compass Chair, devirtualized

Brandon Bandy (2021)

Noura Tafeche Lesia Vasylchenko Pedro Gossler Total Refusal Marc Tuters Paolo Cirio Dana Dawud Brandon Bandy Fantastic little splash

Noura Tafeche

― Artist

Noura Tafeche is a visual artist, onomaturge, and independent researcher whose practice spans installation, archival methodologies, experimental laboratories, video, miniature drawing, and the creation of neologisms. Her research explores the techno-political entanglements of visual culture, with particular attention to digital militarism, online aesthetics, meme cultures, and internet hyper-niches. Alongside this, she develops experiments in language and the visual articulation of contemporary imaginaries. Tafeche holds an MA in New Technologies for Art from the Brera Academy with a specialization in the field of net.art, though she describes the Influencers Festival (Barcelona) as her real education. Tafeche has exhibited, lectured, and led laboratories internationally at institutions and festivals including Aksioma (Ljubljana), transmediale (Berlin), Disruption Network Lab (Berlin), Aarhus Kunsthal (Aarhus), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Winterthur), Foto Colectania (Barcelona), the Design Museum (Helsinki), Tainan Art Museum (Tainan), Tomorrow Maybe (Hong Kong), Pirelli Hangar Bicocca (Milan), the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), and the European Union Representative Centre (Al Quds, Palestine).

Lesia Vasylchenko

― Artist

Lesia Vasylchenko (b. Kyiv) is an artist and researcher whose practice spans video, photography, and installation, engaging with the intersections of visual culture, media technologies, and chronopolitics. Through developing speculative concepts such as Tachyonic Data and Chronosphere, she investigates temporality, more-than-human time, and technologies of vision. Vasylchenko holds a degree in Journalism from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and in Fine Art from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Her work has been presented internationally at major exhibitions including the MUNCH Triennial (Oslo), the Pochen Biennale (Germany), and the New Visions Triennial (Finland). In recognition of her practice, Vasylchenko has been awarded the Sandefjord Kunstforening Art Award (2023) and the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2025). Her works are included in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA / Finnish National Gallery (Helsinki), reflecting a growing interest in her critical exploration of temporality and media ecologies.

Pedro Gossler

― Artist

Pedro Gossler is a Brazilian interdisciplinary artist based in Rotterdam whose practice spans photography, video, and animation. His work investigates memory and the archive in post-internet times, examining how digital cultures reshape the ways histories are recorded, transmitted, and reconstructed. Gossler’s projects have been presented at major international platforms, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro. His films have received notable recognition, winning Best Documentary at Sheffield International Documentary Festival and Most Innovative Film at Visions du Réel. In addition to exhibitions, his work has been published by DIS and Do Not Research, and he has been commissioned by institutions including Rupert (Lithuania).

Total Refusal

― Artist

Total Refusal – the pseudo-Marxist media guerrilla is an Austrian collective of artists, researchers, and filmmakers who upcycle the resources of mainstream video games to construct political narratives through videos, interventions, performances, and lectures. Engaging with critical game studies and social theory, the group transforms virtual battlegrounds into arenas of resistance, opening space for counter-hegemonic leftist storytelling. Since its foundation in 2018, Total Refusal has received more than 65 awards and honorary mentions, including the European Film Award, the Best Short Direction Award at the Locarno Film Festival, the Diagonale Film Award for Best Short Documentary, the Contemporary Visual Arts Award of Styria, and the Vimeo Staff Pick Award. Their work has been screened at over 250 international film and art festivals, such as the Berlinale, Doc Fortnight at MoMA New York, and the Locarno Film Festival, and exhibited at leading venues including the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, HEK Basel, and Ars Electronica Linz.

Marc Tuters

― Artist

Marc Tuters is a researcher, curator, and creative generalist working at the intersection of media theory, digital culture, and the arts. Based at the University of Amsterdam, they teach and write on online subcultures, platform politics, and the infrastructures of (dis)trust. In addition to their academic work, Tuters maintains a hybrid artistic practice that spans sound, image, and code. Their curatorial projects — often developed in collaboration with IMPAKT — include Abducting Europa, Radicalization by Design, Weird Gnosis, and Ambient Propaganda, which explore the aesthetic dimensions of ideology and influence in contemporary media environments.

Paolo Cirio

― Artist

Paolo Cirio is an artist and hacktivist whose practice investigates, exposes, and subverts the data systems and infrastructures underpinning contemporary power. Working at the intersections of art, technology, and activism, his projects often transform evidence of systemic exploitation into the basis for creative regulatory advocacy. Cirio’s methods—including hacking, piracy, data leaks, identity theft, and cyberattacks—have provoked international debate and resulted in numerous legal threats. He is known for large-scale interventions such as exposing over 200,000 Cayman Islands offshore firms, publishing 1 million Facebook users on a fabricated dating platform, leaking 60,000 financial news articles and pirated e-books from Amazon, and obfuscating 15 million U.S. criminal records. Other projects have included the exposure of 20,000 patents related to technologies of social manipulation, the piracy of 100,000 Sotheby’s auction records, and an attempt to profile 4,000 French police officers through facial recognition. His early works targeted NATO, with cyberattacks and reports on its military operations since 2001. Cirio’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including Centre Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), and ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), as well as at festivals such as transmediale (Berlin) and Ars Electronica (Linz). He has received numerous awards, among them the Golden Nica, first prize at Ars Electronica (2014), second prize at transmediale (2006), an Eyebeam Fellowship (2012), and an NEA grant at ISCP, New York (2017).

Dana Dawud

― Artist

Dana Dawud is an artist and writer whose practice moves between film, montage, and sound design, navigating the fluidity of internet cinema across both online and offline spaces. Her work traces ruptures and reverberations in contemporary culture, often taking shape as experimental moving-image projects that resist closure and evolve through mutation and accumulation. She is the founder of Open Secret (2024–ongoing), a touring off-site screening series highlighting emerging and post-net artists, and Pleasurehelmet (2020–ongoing), a sound archive of experimental pieces and niche internet subcultures. Her ongoing project Monad (2024–present) exemplifies this approach: a film cycle in perpetual flux, reconfiguring itself with each presentation to layer past, present, and future into a shifting cinematic form.

Brandon Bandy

― Artist

Brandon Bandy is a Long Beach, California-based artist and publisher whose practice examines the conditions of artistic production within the dominance of online platforms and the erosion of cultural institutions. Engaging with ideas of the virtual, visual conventions, and memetics, his works often emerge from contemporary folklore and metadata, shifting form through stages of mediation. By foregrounding site, the lens, and processes of circulation, Bandy creates unfixed works that interrogate how meaning is constructed, reframed, and reproduced in digital culture. He co-operates Special Effects, a publishing studio dedicated to producing art books and editions, and organizes exhibitions at the Los Angeles gallery Timeshare together with Rachel Jackson. Bandy holds an MFA from the University of California, Riverside.

Fantastic little splash

― Artist

Fantastic little splash is a collective comprised of journalist/artist Lera Malchenko and artist/director Oleksandr Hants. fantastic little splash combines art practice and media studies to research collective imagination and emotions appropriation in technosocial systems. Group works with videos, texts and interactive game-based tools. Established in 2016 in Ukraine, their projects have been exhibited at events including transmediale, post.MoMA, Plokta TV, Ars Electronica, Liste Art Fair Basel, Construction festival VI x CYNETART, KISFF, and Docudays, among others. fantastic little splash – participants of the transmediale x Pro Helvetia Residency 2022, and the Cité internationale des arts residency 2023.

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