The exhibition Longing and Misery in Culture and Mass Media presents a dialogue between the simulacral realms of German artist Margret Eicher and the Russian art collective AES+F—composed of Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky, and Vladimir Fridkes.

For both Margret Eicher and AES+F, the appropriation and reworking of pop cultural and art historical images are central to their work. The artists create individual remixes of the imagery of visual culture, producing new compositions that reconstruct figurative scenes. Their work shows people adopting particular poses, portrayed as historic or public figures, presented as models, soldiers or in religious motifs, such as the Renaissance-era sacra conver- sazione, or depicted in the aesthetic of gaming culture or fashion marketing. Blending critique and irony, AES+F and Margret Eicher take up iconic motifs from the analogue and digital worlds and decontextualise them in order to reveal their often political or ideological content. Their work addresses a familiar concept for the public use and ideologisation of images and texts: propaganda, which serves to construct clear and exclusionary values, such as nationalist and glorifying notions of identity. The repertoire of propaganda encompasses the representation of power and submission, depictions of war, scenes from political and economic life as well as the diverse forms of presentation in pop culture, which draw on stereotypes and clichés.