BIX-Medienfassade: Michael Gülzow

In 1641, French philosopher René Descartes formulated the phrase “I think, therefore I am.” Underlying the reflections in his work Meditationes de Prima Philosophia on human cognitive ability is the fundamental assumption that everything we perceive must be questioned. Just because we see the world in a certain way does not mean that it actually is that way. However, for passionate conspiracy theorists, questioning oneself and one’s own perception does not go far enough: what if thoughts—in whatever concrete form—could materialise and become reality?

Filmmaker Michael Gülzow refers to this recurring motif in his work for the BIX media façade of the Kunsthaus Graz. “The solution to a thought is always at the centre of our field of vision” is a key sentence from his mockumentary Der tote Winkel der Wahrnehmung (The Blind Spot of Perception), which won the Diagonale Prize for Innovative Cinema in 2025 at the Diagonale. In several situations, he takes the film’s two protagonists a step further in their search for truth—or does he draw them deeper and deeper into the world of conspiracy theories? Everything—from conspiracy narratives to the laws of nature—could potentially be a construct; nothing is as it seems.

In his reflections on the post-factual age, Gülzow also refers to the so-called “Sokal affair,” a climax in the battle over scientific truth, in which representatives of the sociology of science on the one hand and the “hard” natural sciences on the other confronted each other. Annoyed by the appropriation of physics as an analogy for social science models, physicist Alan Sokal wrote a scientific article in 1996 interpreting quantum gravity as a linguistic and social construct. The article—published without sufficient scrutiny in a cultural studies journal—was later revealed by Sokal to be a hoax, composed of quotations from postmodern thinkers and written in their characteristic jargon, yet devoid of coherent meaning. In doing so, he positioned himself against postmodern relativism, which views scientific findings not as purely objective but as shaped by specific historical and social contexts.

Deliberately misrepresented as “postmodern arbitrariness,” this line of thought has been—and continues to be—politically instrumentalised to discredit science, replace knowledge with belief, and thereby lay the groundwork for “alternative facts.” Today’s ubiquitous post-factual populism relativises the existence of facts through systematic uncertainty, generated by a flood of disinformation, the inversion of facts, and the construction of false connections. Following patterns similar to conspiracy ideologies—but amplified by the echo chambers of social networks—it is far more powerful and dangerous than conventional, often rather eccentric conspiracy theorists.