AN EXHIBITION ABOUT THE FUEL TO GO ON
Anna Stoeva
The Three Veils of Neutrality
text on PVC Strip Curtains
It all starts with a single word – and we learn it through repetition. This is the way humans have been learning since ancient times - from the array of sounds around us we capture acoustic patterns, schemes, structures that tell us - ah, this is the way to signal to people around me. To communicate. To connect.
Anyone who speaks a second language would tell you that they have a different personality in each tongue. Language shapes not only the way we think, it shapes how we feel.
In my work as documentary director I talk a lot to people about how they perceive information - last year we talked a lot about how they perceive the news about the war in Ukraine. The interesting thing is, while it’s a known fact that Bulgaria is deeply cut by the poisonous influence of Russian propaganda, most people will not talk to you about taking clear sides. They will talk to you about neutrality. That’s the word peddled by pro-russian media, that’s the slogan of far right marches - as the random Bulgarian doesn’t buy war, even if it’s sold by Bulgaria’s most influential populists, so they sell “peace and neutrality”. Yet can there be a neutral side in a war? What about neutral compassion? A neutral embrace?
How do you come to swallow such a classic propaganda trope? Starting as well intentioned “objective” information these news bites fall apart into words into sound bites that become fertiliser for a new state of mind. Phrase by phrase, language veils our feelings carefully, hiding from us our gradual desensitisation until it serves us our own indifference on a platter.
Next time you hear a sterile word, think what it actually means to you. Find a synonym. Then an image. Then a personal story, however small, that connects to that image. And the feeling is going to reimerge.
Language is a muscle. We can train it, and the heart will follow.
Anna Stoeva is a documentary artist, producer and filmmaker. In her exploration into documentary art, in her exhibitions Invaluable objects, Pieces of Home and Consumer Basket for the Soul she works with objects as receptacles of stories. Anna is the producer of the short films Red Light and Getting Fat In A Healthy Way, which have gathered 45 international awards and have traveled over 100 festivals to date, and the co-creator and head writer of the German mystery horror series HAUSEN (Sky Deutschland 2020).
