Uitkijk x Simulacrum: HyperNormalisation

This September Simulacrum Magazine returns to De Uitkijk to celebrate the launch of “Little man, what now?” Join us for a very special screening of Adam Curtis’ 2016 documentary HyperNormalisation, celebratory drinks, and, of course, a first look at Simalcrum’s latest issue.

British filmmaker Adam Curtis is one of the most admired thinkers of our time. Drawing on the rich BBC archive, he creates in-depth explorations of our current political and economic society.

In his 2016 essay film HyperNormalisation, Curtis examines how governments, financiers, and technological utopians have replaced the complexity of the real world with a much simpler fake world. He traces the origins of this technique of manipulation to the Soviet Union in the 1970s, where the system was slowly falling apart, but where it proved easier to pretend that everything was fine. Curtis describes how this technique of “hypernormalisation” played an essential role in the rise of Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.

Simulacrum is a quarterly thematic magazine that reflects on arts and culture, and serves as a high-quality publication platform for students and experts from the field. The subjects are always approached from different disciplines which relate to arts and culture, and placed in both historical and contemporary perspective.