CCA Show 2018: Alt-Age: Designing Belief

The Royal College of Art Curating Contemporary Art MA 2018 graduating students present their final projects for the second year of the CCA Graduate Project Programme.  Developed in collaboration with leading London-based art organisations, the students worked in partnership with the Design Museum, Gasworks, LUX and Stanhope. The four projects explore themes of emotional labour, false belief, spatial rhythm, and networks of transmission and reception through different contexts, including a former BBC site in White City, a live evolving exhibition, a one-day festival and a radio broadcast.

Every minute new conspiracy theories are born online. They flow through platforms, systems and networks, unauthored and unwarranted. In this age of ubiquitous connectivity, how can we trust anything that we are presented with anymore? To coincide with the Design Museum exhibition Hope to Nope: Graphics & Politics 2008-18, the Alt-Age: Designing Belief one-day festival, comprising live performances and a symposium, investigates the role of memes and online message boards in constructing and concealing truth. It invites leading thinkers and practitioners across contemporary art, design and technology, to question how conspiracies are building belief systems, communities and alternative bodies of authority. The festival confronts how the design of online platforms can be co-opted by different groups, and how that might be affecting the ways we communicate today.