BILLBOARDS FOR INSTANT RELEASE (memeing)

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forms part of an ongoing series of artistic research titled

METANOIA: The Dysfunctional Economy of Forgiveness in Post-Conflict Capitalism.

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One channel video with the text next to the work

Duration of the video: 1'43” (played in a continuous loop)

incorporating a 5-second generative sequence created via Kling AI

Sound: Recorded by the artist

Year: 2021, re-authored 2026

Presentation: Wall projection (monitor), speakers (headphones) [1]

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In an era of global strife, this work interrogates dysfunction as a deeply rooted biological impasse. The view that forgiveness—as an act of letting go and a stepping stone in conflict resolution—is a native biological adaptation, balanced against a competing evolutionary instinct for revenge, is heavily documented in primatology (1) and cognitive science (2). Because activating it requires deliberate cognitive effort to calm a physiological threat response, behavioral researchers view forgiveness as a flexible, trainable skill (3)—yet in conflict, this mechanism often breaks down.

Drawing upon ancient Hawaiian wisdom, where trapped negative cellular energy manifests as societal warfare, the project transposes the traditional Ho'oponopono mantra—"I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you" (4)—onto contemporary, "me-first" minds via a looping highway video billboard. By re-authoring the ritual with the disruptive boundaries of "Maybe," "can't," "Yet," and "But," Nina Šumarac tests whether fracturing the tradition makes its heavy demands digestible. Yet, the internal standoff refuses to subside, forcing the video to sometimes glitch into a meme (5). Ultimately, the message becomes the medium.

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References

(1) de Waal, F. B. M. (1979). The reconciliation behavior of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) after aggressive interactions. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 5(2), 121–166.

(2) McCullough, M. E. (2008). Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct. Jossey-Bass.

(3) Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2006). Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application. Routledge.

(4) Shook, E. V. (1986). Ho'oponopono: Contemporary Uses of a Hawaiian Problem-Solving Process. University of Hawaii Press.

(5) McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill. [1]

 

 

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Exhibitions:

2021 “IT NEVER HAPPENED!”, an Exhibition dedicated to the centenary of the publication of

         the avant-garde magazine Zenit. Curators: Milica Lapčević, Milos Peskir, Dusan Radovanovic,

         Neda Kovinic. Old Cinema Balkan, Belgrade, Serbia.

2021 STATE OF EMERGENCY -The 90th Autumn Exhibition of ULUS Art Pavilion "Cvijeta Zuzorić", Belgrade

         Curators: Dr Jelena Stojanović i Dr Dejan Sretenović

2022 Principles. Biennial Technology - Technology is humanity, Polytechnic of Turin, Italy

          Curator: Francesca Canfora

2023 I WANT TO BELIEVE curated by LoosenArt, Rome, Italy

2023 Blue Chip Artist Exhibition. Curator Francesca Rossi Artsted Milan

2023 “Self as A Service [SAAS]” XOR Experimental Research And Artistic Practices  pavilion at The Wrong Biennale 

 

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more

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The Conceptual Framework

Feminist researcher Cynthia Cockburn, in her book The Space Between Us (1), raised a critical question regarding how ordinary people arrange to fill the rift of national differences with words instead of bullets—asking what, exactly, we are to “say to each other”. In exploring this human threshold, Mahatma Gandhi’s profound vision of non-violence and conflict resolution offers a powerful, enduring message of hope. Gandhi believed that true peace does not come from political treaties or military victories, but from a quiet, internal transformation rooted in love and truth. He showed the world that when we stop pointing fingers at the opposing side and instead look inward with compassion, we break the cycle of hatred entirely, famously asserting: "There is no path to peace. Peace is the path" (2). [1, 2]

In confronting this dangerous abyss, contemporary conflict resolution and restorative justice theories suggest that individuals from all sides of a conflict must step forward to own a share of political and moral responsibility—what philosopher Karl Jaspers (3) terms "collective liability"—and state plainly: "I am sorry."

Yet, this immediate urge introduces a terrifying moral and philosophical crisis: how is forgiveness possible in a time of war? When the violence of conflict claims the innocent, the very act of offering an apology or expecting absolution can feel like a profound violation of the dead. As philosophers of the "unforgivable" like Hannah Arendt (4) and Vladimir Jankélévitch (5) argue, some atrocities break human scales entirely; one cannot grant forgiveness on behalf of a murdered child, making the trauma structurally unpardonable within traditional human scripts. Contrasting with these rigid philosophical boundaries, trauma psychology and emotional-release theorists suggest that true forgiveness does not require a transactional exchange with the opposing side; instead, it is an internal, self-directed act necessary to release stored trauma, reclaim personal peace, and survive (6).

 

The Technological Loop & Repetitive Conditioning

To test the psychological limits of this space in-between conflicted sides—which functions more as a deep, unknown abyss of generational trauma—the project examines the mechanics of reconciliation dysfunction through a dual artistic framework that interrogates the ancient precolonial Native Hawaiian restorative practice of Ho'oponopono (7). Precolonial Native Hawaiians believed that holding grudges, harboring anger, and breaking spiritual laws (kapu) disrupted familial harmony, causing physical and spiritual illnesses, conflicts, and wars. [1]

In the contemporary era, New Age movements synthesized these traditional Hawaiian values with ancient Eastern repetitive chanting concepts dating from 1500 BCE (8) and Western psychological frameworks like Émile Coué’s 20th-century autosuggestion (9). Coué explicitly advocated the idea that repeating words without active belief can automatically reprogram the subconscious mind on a cellular level. Through this evolution, the ancient belief took a modern form as a repetitive mantra: “I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.” (7) [1]

Rather than viewing this ritual as an expression of a pure heart or a religious mandate, the artist critically analyzes it as a powerful technology of repetitive conditioning designed to erase trapped cellular data. Honoring the depth of this ancestral wisdom, the work acknowledges that true, uncorrupted forgiveness is a superhuman feat—one that human beings, trapped in historical victimhood and psychological anxiety, are organically incapable of achieving. As psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and peace philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti noted, this fundamental human inability to master internal conflict is the root of all external warfare (10). The artist realizes that this ancient ritual of repetition mirrors the exact psychological conditioning utilized by modern advertising and social media infrastructure, which relentlessly bombards the human brain until it successfully sells an ideology.

Consequently, in the interactive sound installation The Peace Mechanism Cleansing Booth (PMCB 2000)—the first work in the series titled METANOIA (11)—the artist encodes the original, unaltered mantra into an automated, AI-like system: a speculative, buyable "smart machine" pitched as a tool that will solve everything, testing whether a technological algorithm can forcefully 'reprogram' our stubborn habit patterns of mind. [1]

 

The Epistemological Rupture & The Highway Billboard

Today, human consciousness is dominated by algorithmically induced polarization and the rapid spread of internet memes (12), which act as a hyper-fast, reductive emotional shorthand that flattens complex geopolitical trauma into rapidly distributed, one-sided political units. The artist's work directly subverts this fast-paced digital lexicon.

Applying Gaston Bachelard's (13) concept of the "epistemological rupture" (rupture épistémologique), true progress requires a radical tearing down of traditional certainties to formulate entirely new concepts. In Billboards for Instant Release, proposed here, this algorithmic ritual of repetition is set in an endless loop on a video billboard standing on an inter-spatial highway. This serves as a physical metaphor for Cockburn’s "space between us"—the site of what "meets halfway". Cultural frameworks and state systems suffer from what physicist P.W. Bridgman (14) called a tenacious, original-sin-like blindness toward rigid, mechanistic explanations, demanding that art function predictably. [1, 2]

By deliberately causing the alignment tool to malfunction and inserting the words “Maybe,” “(I) can’t,” “Yet,” and “But,” the artist disrupts this structural uniformity. These words act as a sharp pattern-interrupt against both technological solutionism (15) and mass media mind-control. They drag the viewer out of passive, algorithmic conditioning and drop them directly into a raw, real, and honest awareness, testing whether fracturing the ritual makes its heavy demands more humanly acceptable. This production of a fractured text perfectly mirrors the fragmented trauma of lived experience:

 

"Maybe, I can't love you. Yet.
But, I am sorry. Please. Forgive me. Thank you..."

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During this experiment, the artist’s inner confrontation between forgiveness and non-forgiveness refused to subside, forcing the video billboard to glitch into a meme.

Ultimately, this project locates the core of dysfunction not within specific geopolitical casualties, but within the universal "human, all-too-human" (17) condition itself. Humanity is fundamentally characterized by its collective, ongoing failure to manifest an 'ideal' reality of absolute peace and prosperity. From this perspective, all human actors—to varying degrees—are inherently corrupted and flawed. By embedding these words of raw honesty into a public framework, the artwork acts as a direct challenge to this shared human limitation, stripping away the delusion of an easy harmony, and forcing both the viewer and the state to confront the raw, unvarnished truth of a very necessary dialogue between us. Love it or hate it, the medium not only is the message, but the message also becomes a medium. [1]

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References

1. Cockburn, C. (1998). The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict. Zed Books. Available via the Ulster University Academic Repository.

2. Gandhi, M. K. (1949). Non-Violence in Peace and War. Navajivan Publishing House. (Source of the foundational quote on peace as an active path). Foundational archives maintained by the Gandhi Heritage Portal.

3. Jaspers, K. (1947). The Question of German Guilt. Fordham University Press/Capricorn Books. Digital catalog file accessible via the Internet Archive Digital Library.

4. Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press. (On the limits of forgiveness when facing radical evil). View publication profiles on the University of Chicago Press Catalog.

5. Jankélévitch, V. (1967). Le Pardon (Forgiveness). Flammarion. (On the structural impossibility of granting absolution on behalf of the deceased). Text profiles available on PhilPapers Index.

6. Enright, R. D. (2001). Forgiveness Is a Choice. American Psychological Association. (On forgiveness as an internal psychological release of stored trauma). Documented via the American Psychological Association APA PsycNet.

7. Pukui, M. K., Haertig, E. W., & Lee, C. A. (1972). Nana i ke Kumu (Look to the Source). Hui Hanai. (The definitive historical text documenting traditional Ho'oponopono). Fully digitized and preserved in the Internet Archive Americana Collection.

8. The Vedas (c. 1500 BCE). (On the foundational concepts of Sanskrit Japa and the psychological reprogramming effects of vocalized chanting). Texts mapped and studied via the Sacred Texts Archive.

9. Coué, É. (1922). Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion. Malkan Publishing. (On the mechanistic repetition of phrases to influence the subconscious mind). Public domain text hosted by Project Gutenberg.

10. Krishnamurti, J. (1968). The Only Revolution. Harper & Row. / Freud, S. (1932). Why War? International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. Complete text transcripts made public on the J. Krishnamurti Online Repository and the Freud Museum Digital Archives.

11. Artist Archive (2021). METANOIA Series: The Peace Mechanism Cleansing Booth (PMCB 2000). Documentation via internal studio inventory logs.

12. Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in Digital Culture. MIT Press. (On how digital media flattens sociopolitical trauma into fast, reductive units). Complete digital profile hosted on the Internet Archive Books Network.

13. Bachelard, G. (1938). The Formation of the Scientific Mind. (On the rupture épistémologique or the radical break from established certainty). Monograph directory viewable via the Marxists Internet Archive Philosophy Index.

14. Bridgman, P. W. (1927). The Logic of Modern Physics. Macmillan. (On society's dogmatic blindness towards rigid, mechanistic explanations). Catalogued via the Harvard University Library Layout.

15. Morozov, E. (2013). To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. PublicAffairs. (On the false promise of algorithms fixing complex human issues). Distributed via Hachette Book Group.

16. Tolle, E. (1997). The Power of Now. New World Library. (On the collective human dysfunction caused by psychological resistance to the present moment). Project site visible at Eckhart Tolle Official Portal.

17. Nietzsche, F. (1878). Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. (On the inherent flaws, hesitations, and limitations structural to human consciousness). Digital transcriptions mapped via the Stanford University Nietzsche Source Project. [1]

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