germany is not divided — myracronauer

10 germany is not divided, germany feels divided.

diploma project w/ anna luca fiedler

Our work stems from our observation of an increasingly polarized society. Germany seems divided into two camps, which are clearly separated from one another and growing ever further apart. Yet these two poles cannot be empirically identified. They arise from a narrative. In this context, sham debates are symbolically charged and incorporated into this narrative. The winners of these debates stand on the far right and are thus able to continually expand their power.

With our work, we aim to highlight the absurdity of this situation and shift the focus by making use of the mechanism itself. For in a society where living conditions and financial resources are unequal, polarization can also serve a productive function. It makes inequality negotiable by reducing complexity and organizing communication.
We need to debate living conditions rather than symbols and identity. For inequality is politically constructed and therefore changeable.

Our poster illustrates wealth inequality by depicting assets as areas and comparing their relative sizes.

Narratives often have a greater impact on society than facts. The same is true of economic narratives. They exist to legitimize our system and uphold the status quo. What do people who have internalized these narratives, and those who benefit from them, contribute?

The Woke Detector uses a pre-trained object recognition model that identifies and locates objects in images, and combines it with a model we have trained. When a person is identified, they are framed by a box we designed and then labeled as “woke” or “right-wing.” In the next step, random characteristics are attributed to the individuals that imply they belong to the opposing side.

When we talk about wealth inequality, it’s nearly impossible to grasp the underlying numbers. The Billionsweeper is an interactive game that helps make large numbers more understandable. Players navigate a grid-based world on the screen and click through facts about wealth. Squares are revealed based on the amount mentioned. An overview projected via a projector gives a sense of the scale of this world.

In our search for differences, we came across objects and characteristics that are currently divisive, yet which we perceive as artificial distinctions. Our GIF plays these image pairs one after another without claiming to be immediately understood.