Alt-Age: Designing Belief

Every minute new conspiracy theories are born online. They flow through platforms, systems and networks, unauthored and unwarranted. In this age of ubiquitous connectivity, where social media hacking, smart technologies, artificial intelligence and augmented reality are disrupting diplomacy and political communication, how can we trust anything that we are presented with anymore?

To coincide with the exhibition Hope to Nope: Graphics & Politics 2008-18, students from the MA Curating Contemporary Art programme at the Royal College of Art have curated Alt-Age: Designing Belief. This event, comprising free live performances and film screenings in the public atrium and a ticketed symposium in the auditorium, investigates the role of memes and online message boards in constructing and concealing truth. It invites leading thinkers and practitioners across contemporary art, design and technology, to question how conspiracies are building belief systems, communities and alternative bodies of authority.The festival confronts how the design of online platforms can be co-opted by different groups, and how that might be affecting the ways we communicate today.

Alt-Age is curated by Marlies Augustijn, Helen Barr, Natalia Benitez, Phoebe Cripps, Thomas Ellmer, Raoul Klooker and Helen Neven as part of the Curating Contemporary Art Programme Graduate Projects 2018, Royal College of Art.

Contributors include: Bora Akinciturk in collaboration with Mehmet Duran, the Demystification Committee, Michael Dieter, Factmata, Timandra Harkness, Joey Holder, Natalie Kane, Daniel Keller, Taylor Le Melle, Kyrre Lien

Background image : Joey Holder, Ra Adcredo, 2018