Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is an ancient attempt to describe the psychology of perception. A group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives are facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality. In Plato’s allegory Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners.

The Assassination of Guy Debord

On May 12th Friday Island will present The Assassination of Guy Debord by Bill Balaskas at European Convention Center Luxembourg (ECCL), Luxembourg. Through his new multi-part work Bill Balaskas will reflect on the current status of Europe, by presenting a participatory installation and a performance at the European Convention Center – the site that hosts the meetings of the Council of the European Union for three months every year.

Learning from Athens

After all disappointments at documenta 14th in Athens one of the participating artists has created the most impressing artworks of the show with the Rose Valland Institute . With this work the artist Maria Eichhorn – based in Germany – is one of the only artists who fits the slogan of this years world show – Learning from Athens

Tow weeks after the opening comes word from Documenta that Maria Eichhorn’s contribution to the quinquennial is a project called the Rose Valland Institute, which “searches and documents the expropriation of Europe’s Jewish population as well as its past and continuing impact.” In anticipation of a September 11–12 workshop that it will host in Kassel, the institute is looking for papers about “orphaned Property in Europe.”