12th Berlin Biennale

History is a constant state of flux channeled by social groups and their leaders. As a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research CNRS in Paris, I try to understand the groups we form, how they evolve, how we shape them, and how in turn they shape us. This approach is rooted in my astonishment over the extreme nature of certain social events, such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide or long term climate inaction.

From Brexit in 2016 to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol in Washington D.C., the accession to power of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (2018), and Viktor Orbàn in Hungary (2010), we have witnessed in recent years a gradual weakening of democratic institutions accompanied by the rise of populism and fascist thinking. Through an interdisciplinary approach that is both scientific and intuitive, Shifting Collectives (2022) allows us to perceive the invisible social and cognitive structures that shape our identities and collective action by providing us with the necessary reflexivity to understand this ongoing social decohesion.