The West develops fictional worlds that deal with cultural imperialism, and questions the means of constructing visual landscapes, which have shaped the socio-economic relationships between the global south, the East and the West to this day. Exoticism emerges as a projection of Western wishful thinking and as an aesthetic exploitation of the foreign in the empire of Western mass cultures. The American socialization of Latin America was at its peak between the 1970s and the 1980s. Film and television served as powerful propaganda instruments to project a certain world view directed against the communist East: from Wonder Woman to today’s Homeland, these series were suitable for the dissemination of American strategies and ideologies. Besides, working through the cracks of lesser good was a way to show us that if something was falling in the category of bad by the good ones, it was always for a greater good.

The West draws a performative study of Western strategies of occupation, reflects didactic methods of cultural imperialism, and takes a look at Western societies as the dream factory of artificial authenticity.

 

Duration: 2 hours, 10 min./ one intermission

 

A production by Constanza Macras | DorkyPark in coproduction with Volksbühne Berlin. Constanza Macras | DorkyPark is supported by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.