The Rwandan Genocide and the "Radio Mille Collines" (The 1000 hills radio)
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This very profoundly researched multimedia art exhibit showcased the functioning of propaganda during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 which culminated in the massacre of 800 000 Tutsis in less than 100 days by their Hutu ethnic counterpart.
The exhibit reconstructed the timeline of the genocide, dug up archival images, photos and texts and extracts from the mainstream media which were displayed on the wall to enable visitors to retrace how the genocide took place and its devastating consequences. So in the first level, were confronted with the history of the genocide. The second level featured the analysis and theoretical explanations of how the genocide became possible.
Three laptop computers were placed on the table in front of the signs "Avant" (Before), "Pendant" (During) and "Après" (After) the genocide on which the students had prepared audio recordings analysing what happened. To create the impression of immersion in this universe, students wore on the front of their white T-shirts the sign "Je suis..." (I am) and on the back, one of the names of the theorists whose theory helped explained various aspects of information and communication that played out in this genocide (Wiener, E. Bernays, Palo Alto, Corneille and Radio Mille Collines.).
This created a Bauhaus effect because the visitor was entirely surrounded in 360° and plunged into the dramatic universe of this genocide, where he/she can discover and appropriate different historic elements of communication put at his/her disposal through the use of various audiovisual displays emitting messages and information in different formats: images, audio recordings, signboards, posters, etc. In order to to convey the gravity of the topic, all the designs were done in black and white.
The way students explained the relevance of N. Wiener's cybernetic theory in explicating why the state controlled media in the Rwandan society pre-genocide was propitious to the genocide is very astute. They observed that the genocide of Tutsis was possible through a privatisation of information by the Hutu government before and during the genocide. The absence of free information was the opposite of the free circulation of information and communication defended by Wiener. This led to an anti-homeostatic situation, thus to entropy which Wieners considered as an absolute evil to be combatted because it is a measure of the degree of disorganisation of any system (society, humans, machines, animals). For N. Wiener, when elements become a system, the whole becomes superior to the sum of the parts. Hence, the individual actors of the massacres relayed by villagers supporting the Hutu cause formed a "system" whose concerted aim was to preserve the Hutu power by destroying the human object of their target: the Tutsis.
The Radio des Milles Collines (RMC) played a major role in orchestrating the massacre of Tutsis. As a vertical and unidirectional media, RMC could not favour free thinking and democracy and thus became a tool for propaganda and manipulation in propagating this hateful ideology through the use of songs, laughter, jokes which rendered banal to its thousands of Hutus listeners, a most heinous crime. All the analysts concord in observing the rise in power of this radio in 1993 and in the months during which the genocide took place. For Wiener, feedback is the action of an element on another which triggers a response from the receiver. The receivers, here tens of thousands of Rwandans that were captivated by this radio emitted a positive feedback to its calls to massacre Tutsis, thereby instigating a retroactive loop of positive feedback by amplifying its message. This showed that students not only understood the subtleties of Wiener's cybernetics theory but also researched further into other theories that shed more light under the sombre functioning of the media in the Rwandan genocide. For instance, whereas they did not encounter this figure in the lecture, the students went out to research the works of Edward Bernays on propaganda and public relations and explained how he had brought the research in psyochanalysis and Gustave Le Bon's work on the psychology of the mob into the field of public relations of which he was a pioneer. Considering that the masses were "irrational and subject to herd instinct—(he) outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways." Bernays was very successful in applying the theory of consent at a large scale (The Engineering of consent. 1947) and in the marketing of propaganda campaigns.
The image gallery and video below shows some of the exhibits in this project and offers an explanation (in French) of its design.
The exhibit reconstructed the timeline of the genocide, dug up archival images, photos and texts and extracts from the mainstream media which were displayed on the wall to enable visitors to retrace how the genocide took place and its devastating consequences. So in the first level, were confronted with the history of the genocide. The second level featured the analysis and theoretical explanations of how the genocide became possible.
Three laptop computers were placed on the table in front of the signs "Avant" (Before), "Pendant" (During) and "Après" (After) the genocide on which the students had prepared audio recordings analysing what happened. To create the impression of immersion in this universe, students wore on the front of their white T-shirts the sign "Je suis..." (I am) and on the back, one of the names of the theorists whose theory helped explained various aspects of information and communication that played out in this genocide (Wiener, E. Bernays, Palo Alto, Corneille and Radio Mille Collines.).
This created a Bauhaus effect because the visitor was entirely surrounded in 360° and plunged into the dramatic universe of this genocide, where he/she can discover and appropriate different historic elements of communication put at his/her disposal through the use of various audiovisual displays emitting messages and information in different formats: images, audio recordings, signboards, posters, etc. In order to to convey the gravity of the topic, all the designs were done in black and white.
The way students explained the relevance of N. Wiener's cybernetic theory in explicating why the state controlled media in the Rwandan society pre-genocide was propitious to the genocide is very astute. They observed that the genocide of Tutsis was possible through a privatisation of information by the Hutu government before and during the genocide. The absence of free information was the opposite of the free circulation of information and communication defended by Wiener. This led to an anti-homeostatic situation, thus to entropy which Wieners considered as an absolute evil to be combatted because it is a measure of the degree of disorganisation of any system (society, humans, machines, animals). For N. Wiener, when elements become a system, the whole becomes superior to the sum of the parts. Hence, the individual actors of the massacres relayed by villagers supporting the Hutu cause formed a "system" whose concerted aim was to preserve the Hutu power by destroying the human object of their target: the Tutsis.
The Radio des Milles Collines (RMC) played a major role in orchestrating the massacre of Tutsis. As a vertical and unidirectional media, RMC could not favour free thinking and democracy and thus became a tool for propaganda and manipulation in propagating this hateful ideology through the use of songs, laughter, jokes which rendered banal to its thousands of Hutus listeners, a most heinous crime. All the analysts concord in observing the rise in power of this radio in 1993 and in the months during which the genocide took place. For Wiener, feedback is the action of an element on another which triggers a response from the receiver. The receivers, here tens of thousands of Rwandans that were captivated by this radio emitted a positive feedback to its calls to massacre Tutsis, thereby instigating a retroactive loop of positive feedback by amplifying its message. This showed that students not only understood the subtleties of Wiener's cybernetics theory but also researched further into other theories that shed more light under the sombre functioning of the media in the Rwandan genocide. For instance, whereas they did not encounter this figure in the lecture, the students went out to research the works of Edward Bernays on propaganda and public relations and explained how he had brought the research in psyochanalysis and Gustave Le Bon's work on the psychology of the mob into the field of public relations of which he was a pioneer. Considering that the masses were "irrational and subject to herd instinct—(he) outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways." Bernays was very successful in applying the theory of consent at a large scale (The Engineering of consent. 1947) and in the marketing of propaganda campaigns.
The image gallery and video below shows some of the exhibits in this project and offers an explanation (in French) of its design.
The photo gallery below show pictures of some of the other arts projects designed by the students in this 2018 winter course.
2018 Vintage |
2019 Vintage
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