Flat Circle is a polygonal metal rack whose sides accommodate sixteen LCD screens. News broadcasts and programs from various times, documentaries, propaganda, and off-air test cards produce a sonorous and visual cacophony that mixes real facts, fictions, and deepfakes. The work is a collaboration between Karel Koplimets and Maido Juss. The artists reflect on informational distortions and excesses and how they affect our collective ‘imaginary’ and belief systems. Both are interested in testing supposed journalistic objectivity, revealing the presence of typical movie strategies in mainstream news, such as the sensationalization of images, the generation of a constant state of tension, and the withholding of relevant information. In building up these settings, the artists also delve into the emotional responses of anxiety and fear that are the inevitable consequences of the neoliberal information economy, stoking a persistent hunger for news and seeding doubt about its sources.
