Joseph Goebbels™ is an art project in the form of a media campaign dealing with the nature of media and mass communication at the beginning of the 21st century. The basic premise is that former Nazi minister of propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, is the ideological father of contemporary mass communication.

The main visual motif of this campaign is a portrait of Joseph Goebbels composed of media and communication company logos.

During the thirties the infosphere became a conduit for mass propaganda. Russia, Great Britain and the USA all relied heavily on manipulation using propoganda during this time. However, propaganda was still most closely identified with Joseph Goebbels and Nazi Germany. This is due in part to the principles of propaganda elaborated by Goebbels, and partly due to the nature of the post-war propaganda itself. If you type "propaganda" into any search engine most of the results will contain the name of Joseph Goebbels.

Sixty years after Goebbels, we find ourselves in a highly developed infosphere-- the internet, twenty-four hour news, direct broadcasting, countless non-stop radio, TV and cable stations, mobile communications, etc.-- which constantly barrages us (its intended recipients) with messages. There are ads for products, political programs or activist's ideas, weather forecasts, information about terrorist actions or fashion trends. The overwhelming power of the media sometimes gets under our skin, but we nevertheless remain gluttonous recipients of the messages. Truth becomes completely irrelevant. We can freely say there is no truth. In the place of truth, we consume ideas from a huge marketplace of messages and narratives that we believe in without any immediate experience or judgment as to their truthfulness. As Goebbels might say today, "If you repeat the message frequently enough it becomes the truth".

From the above, we can derive the following Joseph Goebbels™ principles:

1. There is no truth.
2. All information is irrelevant.
3. History and media messages are mere narratives.
4. Truth is what you choose to believe.


The project itself is a continuation of the web art piece called, "Unstable Portrait of Joseph Goebbels," which you can see on www.kontrola.co.rs/goebbels.

Unstable Portrait of Joseph Goebbels

 
2005 © Aleksandar Maćašev