How to (not) fall in Love with anybunny is a work that needs staging to activate, a choreography that is choreographed as it is written and lived.

​

“How does the shit get into our heads?”

​

Fascism has transformed faces and appearance, dynamic and vocabulary throughout the past centuries. It shapeshifts, it has the power to adapt. Similarly tools to recognize and invalidate it have to continue to be elaborated according to the ways and locations it sews itself in the contemporary social tissue. Today an important political space of fascist mobilization is intimate emotional relationality online.

A neo-Nazi breaks down in tears on Youtube. Previously, in August 2017, he had participated in the far-right march in Charlottesville, USA, and had come home with criminal charges for assault. Now he is pouring his broken heart out to the net public because he allegedly feels persecuted and oppressed by "anti-white racism".

Titled "The Crying Nazi", this video has been passed around, parodied and mocked. It became a meme. It goes against the common idea of the soldierly hardened male body, incapable of gentle and sad emotions. It introduces a counter image of ‘the Nazi’ we grew up with. Moreover it introduces affect as a propaganda tool. Laughter is just one of a big range of emotions and affects: concern, sadness, compassion - being very much emotionally involved is part of how roles on digital platforms are performed today. Simon Strick describes this as “affect performances”. The Alternative Right are trained and highly active as influencers, platform owners, e.g. So-called authenticity, or a kind of transparent emotionality, is a common pattern not only in right-wing mobilization, but as a contemporary internet aesthetic. Solo staged breakdowns and other intimacies in the attic or straight from the bedroom streamed to the world. Relatable feelings become convincing arguments, even if they are not factual. Contemporary digital fascist affect performance presents old Nazi content in new forms and genres. These performances are not just for the sake of entertainment or pastime. They are performed and reacted to for a purpose.

​

Accademie des Beaux Arts, Brussels

2020

​