Acts of Cassandra

The series Acts of Cassandra studies how utopias and dystopian ideologies may refer to our present-day technological and social changes.

The installation operates as an imaginary mind-map in which I juxtapose the trivial fears and expectations of a new world order and the issues of our forthcoming society.

While using the power of visual metaphors, I build an environment in the future, filled with hidden references and symbols inspired by 20th century dystopian literature. In this method, I emphasize how some important phenomena related to today’s societal and political actualities point towards the uncanny directions in our future while it also reflects on our historical prophecies in an almost coincidental way.

I cover a broad spectrum of themes in my narrative from excessive techno-optimism and industrialism up until the social deformations within our contemporary culture.

I also approach some futuristic phenomena but rather from a pessimistic perspective to encourage critical thinking and evaluation towards our rapidly developing world.

Besides my photographic and multimedia observations, I use post-edited scientific research, books and symbolic materials to underpin the multidisciplinary nature of the series.

The title refers to Cassandra, a foreteller in Greek mythology.
Under her name, there is also a psychological phenomenon called “Cassandra complex” which occurs when one’s valid warnings or concerns are disbelieved by others.

“Utopias are more realisable than those ‘realist politics’ that are only the carefully calculated policies of office-holders, and towards utopias we are moving. But it is possible that a new age is already beginning, in which cultured and intelligent people will dream of ways to avoid ideal states and to get back to a society that is less ‘perfect’ and more free.”

Nikolai Berdayev

Avec sa série « Les actes de Cassandre » ce jeune artiste crée un pont entre pratique artistique et sciences sociales. Entre poésie et engagement militant, Varga se fait porte-voix d’une nouvelle relève d’artistes.

Words by Lense.fr

(…) The utopia harbors within itself a concealed past religion, a nostalgic search for our origins, but the images which make up “Acts of Cassandra” shape a concrete visual imagination, capable of surprising and destabilizing at the same time, as it is full of heterogeneous contaminations, which are the mirror of today’s society.

The metaphor and symbol lose their meaning in the breath of archetypes, they enrich themselves, they change, they mutate, they undertake invisible paths, which can be furtively intercepted by some, like radio waves from outer space.

Such waves are, nowadays, either omen of what is bound to happen or the lifeline of a geographically destroyed world, of a capitalist economy, which has found a worthy opponent in the guise of a biological entity or rather a vague hope of strengthen a deleterious and sickly sterile period in favor of some sort of form of archaic rehabilitated humanism (…)

Essay by Giacomo Infantino on Zone Magazine