During election week, Gouvernement will be transformed into a political agora for subversive political ideas and utopian political scenarios. The experimental exhibition project gathers several satirical parties that face populism and political apathy in their countries. Political satire not only urges us to reflect on the absurdity of real politics, it also re-activates people who’ve become politically apathetic.

Via historical images and texts, EUSAP commences a new European alliance surpassing the Schengen borders – perhaps even forming a viable alternative to the European Parliament. It also provides us with an alternative framework to revise European politics, alternatives to e.g. populist tendencies and the importance of satirical and artists parties in contemporary Europe.

 

© Maja Smoszna / EUSAP

 

EUSAP touches on two matters: the origin of satirical parties and the relevance of that cultural phenomenon nowadays. The historical context is illustrated through the exhibited objects, ranging from videos and documentary photos to articles and manifestoes dating back to the late 1980’s.

By displaying visual and performative practices of these parties, the long and valuable tradition unfolds, starting in Prague with The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law. Especially after the fall of the Iron Curtain, many satirical parties arose all over Europe. It seems they’ve never really left since then: they still correspond accordingly to contemporary political issues within a rising new form of authoritarianism, and with means of happening, street art and internet activism they parody the political elites of our times