Book of Veles 3 - Morning Cityscape
2021 - NFT (NFT)
Jonas Bendiksen
For his project Book of Veles artist Jonas Bendiksen travelled to the small city of Veles in North Macedonia, inspired by a series of press reports starting in 2016, that revealed Veles as a major source of the fake news stories flooding Facebook and other social media sites celebrating Donald Trump and denigrating Hillary Clinton. Scores of young people in the impoverished city had discovered that they could make a decent living by fabricating and circulating stories online. Originally presented as a book, Bendiksen’s haunting images show the city of Veles and its inhabitants. A man leans out of a window of a large apartment block, a pair of satellite dishes hanging nearby. A woman sits on an unmade bed, gazing into the screen of a laptop. Grainy and dimly lit, the images are eerie, poignant, and beautiful. They’re also fake. Bendiksen’s project also references an historical tale, the original Book of Veles , involving a story about a pre-Christian pagan bear-god (called Veles) from a manuscript discovered in 1919. While this religious-historical epic is popular today among Russian nationalists, professional academics have concluded it is actually a forgery—a piece of fake news from the 1920s Bendiksen did make two trips to Veles in 2019 and 2020, but he didn’t photograph any people. He shot pictures of buildings, land and cityscapes, and when he returned home to Norway he used video-game-production software to transform the images into three-dimensional renderings. Using a game engine, he built 3D models of people and objects and placed them inside the scenes, carefully adjusting their poses, clothing, and lighting to make everything look as realistic as possible. When the book of the final images was originally published, the project was celebrated as photojournalism, and it wasn’t until Bendiksen made a public announcement that it became clear that it was a fake story about real people, who made fake news. After the reveal, the project was covered in almost 100 articles in the worldwide press.
Jonas Bendiksen is a Norwegian-American artist and photographer whose work addresses enclaves, people on the fringes of society, and those living in isolated communities. His first published book, titled Satellites – Photographs from the Fringes of the former Soviet Union (2006), looked at separatist republics in the former USSR. In 2005 Bendiksen started a project titled The Places We Live about a different type of enclave – the urban slum. This project became a three-year journey through four slum communities around the world. In 2008 it became a book and exhibition featuring projections and voice recordings in a three-dimensional installation. Bendiksen’s work also considers faith and religion, and its place in society. His book, The Last Testament (2017), is about people who claim to be the Second Coming of Christ.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Kaoru Arima
2015Arima’s free brushstrokes gesture towards traditions in Expressionist painting, and Ticket could be seen as an attempt at “pure painting” in which the aesthetics of the medium supersede content...
© » KADIST
Victor & Sergiy Kochetov
1992Ukraine-Russia / Volleyball by Viktor and Sergiy Kochetov features a concrete monument of women volleyball players before the railway station in the village of Vodyanoye, Kharkiv region...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Art in the time of COVID-19 and more | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Radar Via Philippine Daily Inquirer March 19, 2020 ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Radar features articles and posts about arts and culture in Southeast Asia, drawn from local and regional websites and publications – aggregated content from outside sources, so we are exposed to a multitude of voices in the region...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Caring for the Carers: How Malaysian artists working with communities hold space | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Courtesy of Syarifah Nadhirah August 12, 2021 By Rahmah Pauzi (1,300 words, 5-minute read) I had forgotten how loaded the words “how are you,” or “apa khabar,” can be...
© » KADIST
Eric Baudelaire
2013With the war-torn Beirut cityscape as its backdrop—urban alleys, glistening beaches, abandoned buildings—Eric Baudelaire’s complex film, The Ugly One , unfolds in a time and place that vacillates among revolutionary narratives of the past, the fragile and ever-changing political situation of the present, and attempts to piece together the memories of those that live, or once lived, in the city...
© » PRISHTINA INSIGHT
Worker Fatality Rates Still High, BIRN Report Uncovered - Prishtina Insight Home Kallxo Jeta në Kosovë Drejtësia në Kosovë Gazeta JNK Log In Subscribe News Features Opinion Guide Big Deal Archive Follow @prishtinsight Workers labor on the construction site amid the ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic in Pristina, Kosovo, 24 November 2020...
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
Floral art by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and other artists on display at private Deji Art Museum in Nanjing, China | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement Art + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more The exhibition ‘Nothing Still About Still Lifes: Three Centuries of Floral Compositions’ at Nanjing;s Deji Art Museum features more than 100 modern and contemporary artworks, including (above) “Les Amoureux au Bouquet de Fleurs” (1935-1937), by Marc Chagall...
© » 1854 PHOTOGRAPHY
How can photography heal past trauma? Ask a friend - 1854 Photography Subscribe latest Agenda Bookshelf Projects Industry Insights magazine Explore ANY ANSWERS FINE ART IN THE STUDIO PARENTHOOD ART & ACTIVISM FOR THE RECORD LANDSCAPE PICTURE THIS CREATIVE BRIEF GENDER & SEXUALITY MIXED MEDIA POWER & EMPOWERMENT DOCUMENTARY HOME & BELONGING ON LOCATION PORTRAITURE DECADE OF CHANGE HUMANITY & TECHNOLOGY OPINION THEN & NOW Explore Stories latest agenda bookshelf projects theme in focus industry insights magazine ANY ANSWERS FINE ART IN THE STUDIO PARENTHOOD ART & ACTIVISM FOR THE RECORD LANDSCAPE PICTURE THIS CREATIVE BRIEF GENDER & SEXUALITY MIXED MEDIA POWER & EMPOWERMENT DOCUMENTARY HOME & BELONGING ON LOCATION PORTRAITURE DECADE OF CHANGE HUMANITY & TECHNOLOGY OPINION THEN & NOW All images © Sophie Russell-Jeffrey Collaborating with her childhood friend, Sophie Russell-Jeffrey was able to access the most difficult episodes of their past – and push her portraiture into raw new territory Sophie Russell-Jeffrey was born and raised in Towcester, a small East Midlands town of around 10,000 people where “everyone knows everyone’s business”...
© » THEARTNEWSPER
The latest exhibition at England's Baltic sets a whole new bar for showing art in a climate crisis Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Green is the New Black blog The latest exhibition at England's Baltic sets a whole new bar for showing art in a climate crisis Stepping Softly on the Earth embodies the themes of sustainability and interconnectedness both in its theme and how it has been put together Sponsored by Louisa Buck 6 February 2024 Share Stepping Softly on the Earth brings together work by more than 20 artists from across the world, whom together challenge our human-centred perspective Photo: John McKenzie @ Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Green is the new black In this monthly column, Louisa Buck looks at how the art world is responding to the environmental and climate crisis...
