Propaganda – Flooding the Zone with Shit – It’s About Money, Stupid!
14.11.2026 — 07.03.2027
Opening: 13 November 2026, 6 pm
Joshua Citarella
Ganslmeier & Zibelnik
Ben Grosser
Playfool (Daniel Coppen and Saki Maruyama)
Oguz Sen
In cooperation with the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ Jena) and the DFG Research Training Group ‘Aesthetics of Democracy’ at Goethe University Frankfurt and TU Darmstadt
Curated by the team of the Frankfurter Kunstverein
Propaganda in the era of ‘post-truth’ is fast-paced, chaotic and emotional. Above all, however, it has become measurable, and user behaviour is tracked in real time. Clicks, likes, shares, follower counts, comments and time spent on content determine almost instantaneously which images, narratives and emotions are rewarded with attention.
Everything is transparent: every search query, every online purchase and every social media post contributes to the profiling of individuals and entire target groups. Those who possess this data can set trends and use microtargeting to distribute content with precision.
A battle for hearts and minds is raging both online and offline. It’s a culture war between opposing world views, and it concerns ideas about who belongs and who is excluded, who we believe ourselves to be and who we want to become and, ultimately, who has power over whom. This battle over interpretation has already moved from internet forums to the ballot box, and it is happening worldwide.
Flooding the zone with shit is the playbook of authoritarian populism, which has established a new form of political communication as a benchmark. The deliberate flooding of the public sphere with provocations, controversial issues and baseless speculation undermines fact-based debate and journalism, while dominating the public agenda. A shared social reality is fragmenting into ever smaller public spheres. There is no longer a self-evident shared basis on which disagreement itself can take place. Emotion, repetition and distraction are becoming increasingly powerful. Fear and experiences of powerlessness can be politically exploited. Money also plays a decisive role in determining who can buy attention and the power to shape interpretation.
So how do we encounter propaganda today? Which images, strategies, codes and techniques are used in the struggle to shape people’s convictions and opinions? Who determines which narratives prevail? Is the flood of polarising content and imagery part of a deliberate strategy? Which actors benefit from it, both politically and financially?
Once again, the Frankfurter Kunstverein takes the risk of addressing subjects charged with the potential for confrontation and debate. We all share a sense of being overwhelmed and anxious about the future. Yet this is not the time for withdrawal and passive concern.
Propaganda – Flooding the Zone with Shit – It’s about Money, Stupid! captures a moment within a current of rapid change. As it has so often done before, the team of the Frankfurter Kunstverein gives both art and academic research a prominent voice in this exhibition.
We have invited seven internationally recognised artists who have been working intensively on the topics of propaganda and online subcultures for many years. Through their work, each of them delves deep into chaotic worlds of images and ideologies.
Joshua Citarella is regarded as one of the foremost chroniclers of so-called ‘extremely online’ culture. For years, he has investigated how young people on Instagram, TikTok and 4chan can drift into radical ideological niches through memes, irony and algorithms, and in 2026, the European Parliament invited him to present his research. Since 2024, he has expanded his artistic practice and has hosted Doomscroll, an internationally influential channel where he interviews artists, content creators and avant-garde thinkers of the new left.
Ben Grosser makes the invisible architecture of digital platforms visible. He is an artist and a professor of new media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Grosser examines the metric logic of social platforms, and art is his tool for exposing invisible structures of power. He analyses code, interface design and algorithms of affirmation until their manipulative force becomes visible. He creates works that reduce the language of tech oligarchs to its essence, revealing their ideas about technology, progress and society.
The artists Ganslmeier & Zibelnik delve into the depths of hundreds of TikTok accounts. They reveal the fluid transitions between self-care, radical self-optimisation and, ultimately, the move towards political radicalisation. Their multimedia installations are both sensorial and unsettling. In their work Bereitschaft, they trace how National Socialist ideals of the body reappear on contemporary social media and circulate in new contexts.
Daniel Coppen and Saki Maruyama, as the artist duo Playfool, present the intricate interactive spatial installation [OP]erator. Their work is a walk-in, fully functioning ‘bot network’. In real time, it demonstrates how a single post can be amplified automatically and, within minutes, influence and take over entire discourses on X (formerly Twitter). Their work explores how digital applications can synthetically produce seemingly authentic crowds. As a result, artificially generated content becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from genuine participation in public discourse.
Oguz Sen represents an anti-elitist approach and an understanding of art as a collective process. His best-known paintings were created in public spaces and function as monumental political statements. These include the portrait of the drowned refugee child Alan Kurdi at Frankfurt’s Osthafen and the 27-metre-long memorial mural beneath the Friedensbrücke commemorating the victims of the racist terrorist attack in Hanau. For this exhibition, Sen responds directly to the architecture of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. He creates new sculptures that engage with monumentality, emotionally charged imagery, public visibility, affective forms of expression and an unequivocal stance.
We invited the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ) in Jena and the Research Training Group ‘Aesthetics of Democracy’ at the Goethe University Frankfurt and TU Darmstadt to develop content for the exhibition with us. This collaboration has resulted in a series of striking exhibits: an immersive VR installation exploring connections between tech oligarchs, politicians and political donations; a glossary of terms, codes and symbols used in far-right online communities; and background films in online propaganda campaigns. We would like to thank Ann-Kathrin Benner, Maik Fielitz and Harald Sick from IDZ Jena, as well as journalist Rina Wilkin.
A large chronological presentation of events at the beginning of the exhibition was developed with the advice of researchers Martin Renz, Luna Vega and Robert Thyssen from the Research Training Group. With their support, our team created an 18-metre timeline stretching from antiquity to the present day. It presents key stages and turning points in the history of propaganda, major publications, the media and technologies that have fuelled it and whistleblowers who have exposed hidden structures and practices.
Following Greenland – Not For Sale – Kalaallit Nunaat Forever, the Frankfurter Kunstverein turns to the next chapter in its cycle of political exhibitions with Propaganda – Flooding the Zone with Shit – It’s about Money, Stupid!. In autumn 2027, the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn will present a major new production with us. Entitled Paradox Parc, it will explore the mechanisms of the economy of desire in an age of widespread loneliness.
