DECODING (THE WHOLE TRUTH)

 

Karin Ferrari scours Internet platforms like Youtube and Gaia for esoteric and conspiratorial explanatory models of various subcultures. She spins them in recourse to academic research and her own imaginations into ambivalent audiovisual decryption narratives: DECODING Katy Perry’s Dark Horse (THE WHOLE TRUTH) purportedly unmasks Kate Perry’s music clip as an encrypted message from an occult community, while DECODING The Mysteries of Antarctica (THE WHOLE TRUTH) reads into its historical and contemporary representations and symbols, testimonials from alien populations and more obscure secrets of the Antarctic. Ferrari’s videos create suggestive causal chains made of collages from found footage and specially made animations. At the same time, however, they exaggerate the brilliance of the individual pearls of the chain of arguments to an extent that makes us reluctant to simply believe them, and the pearl thread is about to tear every moment: On the one hand, the detail-obsessed decoded scenarios unfold a seductive pull and on the other hand, they introduce in their gaps and smooth transitions, their underlying insane hubris. Also the voice-over links the images and unties them in the same breath. We hear the voice of the artist herself, in the style and color of a computer-generated voice ironically and in vain to approximate. The voice of Ferrari makes the big story oscillate between the poles of “the whole truth” and a medium for prompted ghost voices, that responds with astonish- ment to to their own statements while it reciting them. Instead of aiming for a decoding of the subjects as specified in the title, Ferrari’s work spells out the stylesheet of truth production and validation strategies on the net and asks which debates about our world the users on the digital platforms are actually conducting when they seemingly exchange about occult and extraterrestrial messages.

Nina Tabassomi, Director Taxispalais – Kunsthalle Tirol

The rhetorical form of D E C O D I N G Katy Perry’s Dark Horse ( T H E W H O L E T R U T H ) by Karin Ferrari, is clearly inspired by a rich vein of independent documentaries on YouTube which purport to uncover or
correctly analyze the symbolic manifestations of major conspiracies in our public life. Set in Memphis – Egypt – and suffused with hieroglyphic imagery, an ultra light pop-music video by the eponymous American star receives a dogged, and deadpan, analysis in a voiceover supplied by the artist. Like the underground media whose idioms it highlights, Ferrari’s argument is by turns wei rdly convincing and highly implausible.”

Nadim Samman, ‘Deep Inside’ V Moscow Biennale for Young Art, 2016

 

  

“Karin Ferrari’s perilous expedition through the obscure terrain 

of Antarctic ‘alternative facts’ has resulted in an appropriately 

warped documentary. DECODING The Mysteries of Antarctica 

(THE WHOLE TRUTH) will premiere onboard the Akademik Sergei 

Vavilov scientific research vessel after it crosses into the 
Antarctic Circle.  Nadim Samman

 



 

 

Ausstellungsansicht, Investigative Séances x Sonorous Trajectories (kuratiert von Shilla Strelka), Bar Du Bois, Vienna 
Foto: Philippe Gerlach 2015