Mario Mu / Confessions
Solo exhibition
FROM THE PREFACE OF THE EXHIBITION
When we talk about the public perception of what is true and what is false, in this context we can see confessions as relatives of gossip and rumors. In the process of confessing certain secrets to everyone else, together we create an information body that then has an autonomous life of its own. It spreads further through networks as a kind of meme or a living image-body that is capable of transforming itself further in multiple forms, never to return to its origin. And while the act of confession itself can have a therapeutic effect, the pleasure that comes from spreading rumors is largely masochistic. Unlike the truth, lies have the advantage of spreading much faster and more easily, which has probably allowed experienced internet trolls to successfully perfect a quick method of rewriting facts for their own purposes. On the other hand, the truth binds us to a specific time and limits us, because it requires commitment from us. From this slowness comes bad news for all precarious people, because it takes a very long time to make real money from the truth. However, the good news is that memes can also be used as a weapon against various internet trolls. What we need now is the conscious and thoughtful production of various forms of memes that could develop smoothly and slowly over long periods of time and that are consciously shaped to penetrate many other social spheres. This is a call to create memes that, sown like seeds, could one day grow in a context different from ours, but which still carry the initial message of resistance to the growing new totalitarian regimes.
Mario Mu
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Mario Mu was born in 1987 in Metković and currently lives and works in Berlin. He graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) in 2017 in the class of Hito Steyer. He also completed his undergraduate studies at the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2015 and his graduate studies at the Faculty of Graphic Arts in Zagreb in 2011. In the period between 2010 and 2017, he used the name Mario Udženija when exhibiting in Cologne, Berlin, London, Split, Strasbourg and Zagreb. As an active member during 2016 and 2017, he worked at the RCPP (Research Center for Proxy Politics) in Berlin. Recently, he has worked intensively on a series of LARP events as a game designer or performer, for example at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), the Silent Green cultural center in Berlin, the PLAY CO. conference in London and the Pakhuis de Zwijger center in Amsterdam.
Selected exhibitions: Walkthrough, GMK, Zagreb, 2018. ,Brand new production., n.b.k./silent green, Berlin 2017., Medea, Play Co., London, 2017., Base level, UdK, Berlin, 2017., 33. Youth Salon, HDLU, Zagreb,
2016., Ying 7, Ying Colloseum, Berlin, 2016.,Post-Morphosis, Schiller Palais, Berlin, 2016., Wollste nicht mal Bulle werden?, Schroeder&Dorr, Cologne. Refrath, 2016. , Contrainte en blanc, La chausserie, Strasbourg, 2015. and Essl Art Award 2015, MSU Zagreb, 2015.
The exhibition at the Šira Gallery can be viewed until October 29, 2018.
