Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective

Dutch artist Jonas Staal presents a new chapter of his contemporary propaganda research through the retrospective of the films and cultural and political work of Stephen K. Bannon in Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam.

With this exhibition project Staal aims to demonstrate how Bannon’s work a crucial example of the major impact of propaganda art on contemporary democratic societies, that is not exclusive to the United States, but equally manifests itself in the Freedom Party (PVV) and Forum for Democracy (FvD) in the Netherlands and other proto-fascist and white nationalist movements throughout Europe.

Stephen K. (Steve) Bannon is best known as campaign manager and later senior White House Advisor of US President Donald Trump, as well as former editor-in-chief of Breitbart News. Less well known is Bannon’s work as a filmmaker, producing nine documentary film-pamphlets between 2004 and 2016. From In The Face of Evil (2004) to his most recent film Torchbearer (2016), Bannon sketches a grim profile of a world on the brink of disaster, beset by economic crisis, secular hedonism, and Islamist fundamentalism.

Bannon describes his work as a form of “kinetic cinema,” which, as he puts it, “aims to overwhelm an audience,” and is inspired by the work of Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, and Michael Moore. His films aggressively showcase the manifold dangers faced by his ideal of Christian-democratic nationalism. In Bannon’s films, “strong” leaders such as Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump, emerge as the sole defenders of Christian faith, military might, family values, and economic nationalism. Looking back on his work, we can argue that what we have come to know as “Trumpism” was decades in the making in Bannon’s propaganda work.

For years, Staal has extensively researched the role of art, architecture, and design in the rise of ultranationalism and the international alt-right. In 2010 he reconstructed the so-called Freethinkers’ Space in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, a copy of an exhibition space founded by the ultranationalist Freedom Party (PVV) and the liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) in their parliamentary offices in The Hague, showcasing artists that were supposed victims of Islamist censorship. In 2011 he presented Closed Architecture, a publication, exhibition, and film on a prison model designed by PVV politician Fleur Agema before she entered politics. In 2018 Staal completed his PhD research Propaganda Art from the 20th to the 21st Century as part of the PhDArts–Promoveren in de Kunsten program at Leiden University.

This exhibition project is curated by Marina Otero Verzier, Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut. In its multiple programs, Het Nieuwe Instituut addresses some of the most pressing questions affecting contemporary society, in which art, design, architecture, and digital culture play a key role. Our contemporary world is increasingly shaped by the volume and speed at which information circulates and dominant narratives are construed, making it imperative to challenge what Walter Lippmann described as the “pseudo-realities” of our limited information bubbles. As Staal suggests following Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies (2017), the alt-right is not simply a political movement, but is above all a cultural one that permeates the larger realm of media and popular discourse. The ambition of Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective is, therefore, to offer an understanding of the effects of the visual and ideological architecture of the alt-right to a broad audience in order to open spaces and opportunities for resistance.

On June 2, 2018, an international conference titled Propaganda Art Today will bring together artists, activists, theorists, writers, journalists, and politicians, to map the multitude of propagandas that shape our world today.

Financial partner:
Mondriaan Fund

With gratitude to PhDArts (The Hague/Leiden) and the Promoveren in de Kunsten research program of the NWO and Mondriaan Fund (Amsterdam), for their support to Staal’s research project Propaganda Art from the 20th to the 21st Century (2012–18).