VIRAL HALLUCINATIONS

House of Photography • Deichtorhallen

I have collaborated with curator Nadine Isabelle Henrich, head of the House of Photography of the Deichtorhallen for her exhibition series VIRAL HALLUCINATIONS. The series centers on the visual cultural phenomenon of non-factual narratives and their social dynamics, focusing on their photographic manifestations.

  • The exhibitions and event series (2024–2026), curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, centers on the growing ecosystem of photographically-interpreted images, as the viral carriers of imaginary worlds and fictionalized narratives, with a lens on the media and technological conditions that drive the dynamics of a »new conspiracyism«, and the role of photographic images and their synthetic remediations in disseminating disinformation and post-factual narratives (»conspiracy theories«).

  • Using Ecosystemic Storytelling i have design specific adaptations of the Graphic System to map and provide tool for the evolution of curatorial concepts of the exhibition and event series. This maps are a way of opening Nadine Henrich’s curatorial process to the audience and to create a space of interaction with the artist and public,

  • As part of the project we have designed a series of workshops to accompany the exhibition series and dive deeper into the narrative complexities of Viral Hallucinations. The workshops are a sort of laboratory for the themes, bringing multiple persepctives around the topics, using the Ecosystemic Storytelling world buildiing approach

Digital Scales

Analog scales

I developed an Ecosystemic Storytelling system to structure and visualize the reasearch behind the conception and development of the exhibition series. The first step in the process was to develop a Graphic System that would include the various thematic lines of the exhibition series. Departing from my concept of “narrative ecologies” we identified 4 main quadrants and a key symmetry between the scales, that represented the analog world and its digital couterpart.

The system was meant both for internal use of the curator as she was diving deeper in the research as well as a public piece that will visualize the research and development process to the audience of the exhibition. 

First Iteration of the Map • Tatics & Mythologies

The map represents an open process that evolves as new research is included and more layers interact within the map, but also as the dialogue with the audience and community bring new questions and contributions to the discussion.

The map was designed to intertwine different layers of information to allow the emergence of connections between the elements. The initial layer was the key quotes that Nadine Isabelle Henrich and her reaserch team prepared. In dialogue with the curator we mapped the quotes in the ecosystem and scale where they belonged. After that I extracted key concepts from each quote that would create a new conceptual layer of interconnections.

Viral Mythologies: Unraveling the Narrative Ecologies of Conspiracy

Using the Ecosystemic Storytelling process, in a dialogic process with the participants, we extracted the tactics and narrative structures of various viral conspiracy narratives, mapping them into the Viral Hallucinations Graphic System, to identify tactics that could be used to develop counter-narratives. 

Second Iteration of the Map • States of Rebirth

The concepts I extracted in the dialogic process with the participants where included as one of the layers in the second iteration of the exhibition wallpaper for Viral Hallucinations # 2, States of Rebirth.