Clickbait Citizen

Clickbait Citizen

Clickbait Citizen thinks about the evolving relationship between power, propaganda, art and culture. It explores how public art and cultural practices never act neutrally – they are always active in the real world, continually making and disrupting shared stories, narratives, meanings and understandings. What is happening in Europe, Russia, China? I write about how dramaturgy, performance, AI, photography, deep fake, and other kinds of art are impacting upon political discourse and the outlook for democracy around the world.

Clickbait Citizen is also a place we think historically about the 20th century and earlier. We explore how the arts have been instruments of influence for Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, the US among others.

Our world is moving at a break-neck speed. Our economies are globalised, our communication systems instantaneously confirm, question, or lie to us. Our institutions, our identities and cultures are in a seemingly permanent state of liquidity and fluidity. Our ability to talk to one another across the planet has never been easier or cheaper. Yet, whether we are aware or not, agree or not, we still depend on stable and trustworthy facts and lines of communication for our safety, health, our economies, and collective futures. What we are told we can believe still matters. Without trustworthy facts and information we are unable to act in the real world, our personal and collective ‘agency’ diminished or extinguished. When we lose faith in our ability to identify facts, when reality is turned into a haze of confusion, our ability to make decisions about our personal and collective futures become paralysed. Without facts the future is cancelled; we enter a mode of pre-apocalyptic survivalism.

Clickbait Citizen draws a distinction between debates about ‘free-speech’ and the precarious position of ‘facts’. Calls for ‘free-speech’ in our contemporary world are often used by libertarians and the far-right to advance ideas and ideologies which dismiss the importance of facts. This is a dangerous and disingenuous path to walk. But there is something else going on too, which Hannah Arendt alludes to in the quote above. While there is a distinction between fact and fiction, and an obvious need to be able to distinguish between the two, we need both. We use stories to tell one another about what we imagine the future holds. And politics and politicians are as dependent on this as any of us.

“East/West” (Sofia, Bulgaria): Andrei Molodkin/Santiago Sierra

But why are facts under such threat? Why, after centuries of effort invested in reaping the rewards of the ‘age of enlightenment’ are we now supposedly turning our back on the transformative power of facts to make our lives richer, safer and predicated on collective wellbeing? Shoshana Zuboff suggests the answer may rest in our contemporary economic arrangements, in the way our own stories and narratives are being commodified:

Sur-veil-lance Cap-i-tal-ism, n.

• A new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales;

• A parasitic economic logic in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioural modification.*

Something about me

I am an award winning director of theatre and performance and a writer of books, plays and essays. My work has been staged in many different countries and for many kinds of audiences. Writing has always been important, a way to stay sane, understand what I am really thinking, illicit responses and conversations, to engage in calm thinking with others - with, I imagine, people like you. My books explore aspects of theatre, education and history while my essays cover a broader canvas.

“Mystery 0” / MYSTERIES OF TRANSITION - Elefsina 2023 (Greece) Dir: Chris Baldwin

Thinking and working with others on narrative structures for large-scale public performances, which contain both live and broadcast components, is both daunting and fascinating. The narratives of the performances I have directed have examined some of the most complex subjects of our epoch: climate crisis, the Holocaust, the post-WW2 re-organisation of European borders, and much more. TV and broadcast audiences have often reached millions - yet with this comes a responsibility to think carefully about both dramatic narratives, history, fiction and facts.

I was Artistic Director for the opening for Eleusis/Elefsina (European Capital of Culture 2023, Greece), Artistic Director of big events for Kaunas (European Capital of Culture 2022, Lithuania), Creative Director for Galway (European Capital of Culture 2020, Ireland) and Curator for Interdisciplinary Performance for the city of Wroclaw (European Capital of Culture 2016, Poland). I have also led festivals and theatres in the UK and Spain and taught at universities and drama schools across Europe including a period as Visiting Professor at Rose Bruford College, London. My doctoral research (Kent) was on collective and political trauma and the cultural city. My books about theatre, education and culture are used in teaching across the world. More can be found here.

Chris Baldwin

“Sikilimas” - Kaunas 2022 (Lithuania) - Dir: Chris Baldwin

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In this forum, I ask questions about the relationship between power, propaganda, art and culture. I invite you to join me in choosing the questions I will write about. If you subscribe, and post comments, they will come to me, and help me decide what I will address in the future.

Clickbait Citizen consists of one or two posts a week.

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* Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – The Fight for Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (Profile Books)