ARTIFAKE: Art Invades Fake

ARTIFAKE (Art Invades Fakes) is a transnational project, which aims to promote media literacy and critical thinking in Ukraine, Poland and Armenia by exploring propaganda through transnational street art.

Post-truth, fake news, disinformation and media manipulation are just some of the terms used to describe what is essentially propaganda – information, especially biased or misleading, used to pursue political goals or promote a specific point of view. Thanks to digital technology, propaganda and disinformation have gone global, but its influence is most destructive in fragile contexts – conflict and post-conflict states.

Ukraine and Armenia, as transitional states, follow a similar path, and fall under direct fire of Russian propaganda through their shared post-Soviet mentality and common Russian-language media space – and Poland shares their Eastern bloc past and concerns with Russian influence in the region. Thus, the partners would like to propose an exploration of propaganda rooted in art.

ARTIFAKE will bring together 25 street artists from the partner countries to study the phenomenon of propaganda (its mechanisms, narratives, and consequences), and information consumption in the modern world in a micro-residence program in Donbas, Ukraine – a region, which serves as a tangible case study of the effects of hybrid war, media manipulation and disinformation. The program will capitalize on the partners’ expertise in fighting propaganda and social art to develop common, transnational understanding of propaganda among selected artists.

The artists will get a chance to develop art concepts on the subject of propaganda and disinformation, and 9 of them will receive bursaries from the project to bring their creations to life in 3 small towns in Ukraine, Poland, and Armenia.

The artistic components of the project will be accompanied by a strong communication campaign in traditional and new media, community engagement, and awareness raising activities, resulting in increased levels of critical thinking and media literacy among the artists, local populations, and the general public of the participating countries and beyond.