TRUTH AND LIES (OR PARAFICTION) & THE CZECH DREAM (ČESKÝ SEN)

Art/Truth/Lies

What experiences, what skills, what ways of looking is [parafiction] training us in? And for what purpose? What does it mean to be a subject of parafiction? What might living with parafiction entail? — Carrie Lambert-Beatty

'... At yesterday’s inaugural Walls and Bridges event, D. Graham Burnett joked to the audience about our missed opportunity to enact, instead of only discussing, parafiction. Because of New York’s snowstorm, Art/Truth/Lies was pushed back a day, but Burnett proposed, what if the audience had shown up to an empty room? If the panel discussion on parafiction turned out to be a work of parafiction, how would we react if the hoax was real?

Burnett, Pierre Cassou-Nogues, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, and Glenn Lowry together discussed the merits of a recent irruption of works, or hoaxes, that destabilize ideas of authority, archives, and proof, as well as anticipating and mapping the various reactions to parafiction. Lambert-Beatty pointed out that in the course of ten years, artists have produced fakes (advertising campaigns, museum tours, store fronts, films, bibliographies) and even became fakes themselves, posing a spokespeople, government employees, and experts. Yet, parafiction is a different genre of hoaxing. Glenn Lowry, looking at works from Middle Eastern artists, explained how a parafictional practice may be a way for a region, deeply affected by war and catastrophe, to surpass that violence. In some cases, parafiction could be extremely critical, a necessary way to intervene.

Above is the trailer for Český sen, a Czech documentary. In the film, two filmmakers launch a marketing campaign for a new, giant hypermarket–a fake hypermarket. After weeks of billboards, television commercials, and beyond generous, deeply discounted coupons, the hoax is revealed (after a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a rush toward the fake facade). The “customers” react: some are disappointed, several are angry, and others understand. Burnett asked the audience to consider the types of pleasure derived from discovery of a hoax. Is there a feeling of horror, disorientation, or embarrassment? Or, is there a sense of jubilance and genuine pleasure? The moment of demystification is crucial to the success and reception of a parafictional work. The moment when you realize the work was a hoax and return again to it, Lambert-Beatty described as “dignifying the scurry;” and Dupuy pointed out how, in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the audience learns how we were taken for the first two-thirds of the movie, but then, for the remaining third, we get to know, swapping our pleasures.' from village voice article