‘Finish them’ - that was the response to the Hamas attack on the seventh of October, which American politician Nikki Haley advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do. The Republican Haley, who at the time still thought she had a chance of running for president, was obviously proud of her successful formulation and wrote it by hand on a bomb in Israel in May 2024. The Israeli army then dropped the signed bomb over the Gaza Strip.

‘Finish them’ - the phrase is a slightly modified quote from the video game “Mortal Kombat”. When the opponent in a duel is on the verge of defeat and is defenceless for a moment, a grave voice utters the command: ‘Finish him’. Experienced players can use this moment to grab their opponent and perform a ‘finishing move’. A finishing move can look like this, for example: The exhausted opponent is thrown into the air and his body is pierced by two daggers attached to ropes.

The daggers then pierce the back of the head and emerge from the eye sockets. The winner, in this case the character ‘Scorpio’, pulls back the ropes with a jerk, separates the opponent's head from the body and uses the severed head to cut the airborne corpse in two. The body parts fall to the floor, the blood gushing, while ‘Scorpio’ catches the severed eyeless head with one hand like a ball.

‘Finish Them’ is one of the first pictures created for the “POP+PROPAGANDA” exhibition. Like many of the paintings, ‘Finish Them’ is an experiment with image creation through artificial intelligence and an attempt to visualise how primitive and tasteless our culture is behind the glittering surface of pop culture and modern technology.

Criticism of pop culture always means criticism of American culture, of globally established American ‘soft power’, which also enjoys great popularity in Germany. We firmly trust in our American friends; the American side is our side, the side of the free world, the side of Europe. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is an influential person, a representative of the American elite.

The exhibition ‘POP+PROPAGNDA’ is primarily about creating an awareness here in Germany of how radically the world has changed; for example, what has become of our friends in Washington since the end of the Cold War.

Street art, comics, designer toys, erotic photography: what was frowned upon, eccentric or even criminal yesterday is now hip and stands for modern, authentic and cool in the visual alphabet of advertising. The works in the exhibition utilise all available tools, from spray cans to artificial intelligence, to explore how superficially rebellious art can serve as window dressing for a conformist and static society.

Many of the works shown in ‘POP+PROPAGANDA’ were created in exchange with the AI platform ‘Midjourney’. The process of creating the images is often lengthy because the system misunderstands the ‘prompt’, makes mistakes or because the increasingly strict censorship of the platform prohibits the creation of the image. Normally, the user always selects one or two of the four versions provided by the system to continue working with. But sometimes fascinating coincidences occur and the AI creates images that give the eerie impression of being watched by a creature that is disgusted by humans.

This effect is particularly pronounced in the image ‘Proxywar’. The ‘prompt’ consisted of just one word, ‘proxywar’, and the image was among the first four images spit out by the system.

‘POP+PROPAGANDA’ does not claim to be an art exhibition in the classical sense. Without the AI programme ‘Midjourney’ and the support of Nadine Anderson-Cheng, Rodrigo Esperon, Ursula Schmitz and the sprayers ‘Remix’ and ‘Angus’, most of the works would never have been created. The works and the exhibition arose above all from the need to make a contribution in the face of a development that makes a global catastrophe ever more likely.

 In an uncertain world undergoing a radical transition, only one things is certain: what we are currently experiencing is not a confrontation between good and evil. The world is determined by people and their interests, and each group of people considers its own interests to be legitimate. Defining the other side as ‘evil’ and one's own as ‘good’ is a sign of ignorance and encourages dehumanisation. Everything we define as ‘evil’ is based on this dehumanisation.

About the author:

René Lindner is the founder of www.language-and-skills.eu and lives in Düsseldorf.