The 1LLCER students visited War Is Peace? at the Nobel Peace Center after exploring democracy, the thin line between utopia and dystopia, and the documentary Orwell: 2+2=5. One warning echoed through it all:
“War is what happens when language fails.” — Margaret Atwood
One idea lingered: Freedom rarely disappears with a crash, it erodes when we stop paying attention. In Orwell’s world, truth bends. In ours, it can too. 2+2 must always equal 4.
6 testimonials:
“The exhibition “War Is Peace” as well as the workshop organized alongside it really highlights the dangerous part of social media and the Internet. It really makes you realize how much we as a society are susceptible to propaganda. I personally found it really scary how good a group of 15-16 year olds are at manipulating people during the “Create your social media platform” activity, and I fear the day AI images will be impossible to differentiate from real ones”. Ev R.
“The exhibition was truly eye opening. It made me see how easily we, as humans are manipulated and influenced without even noticing. But walking through the dark room with the previous peace Prize winners, reminded me that hope for a more truthful world still exists”. Sanni S.
“During the exhibition I was surprised to learn how many of us received all of their news from social media. It made me worried because that’s the least trustworthy source one could rely on… as we saw during our workshop, these apps are made to manipulate and polarise people just to keep them engaged and can be littered with fake news. However, as I read the little messages left by visitors on scraps of paper hung to the wall, I cheered up. Perhaps one of the rare places where you can be sure that all that is written is genuine and wants to bring hope, not hatred. I realised that I hated our world’s situation, not humankind itself. It made me tear up a bit…” Sophie A
“The War is Peace exhibition was really interesting, from being sad and even shocking with all the pictures of dead soldiers, to more “joyful” things when we were creating a new application, and even if it was on how algorithms are really dangerous, it was still fun”. Amandine R-N
“During our visit to the norwegian national museum, the war is peace exhibition invited us to reflect on how images, propaganda and political rhetorics interact together in times of conflict. The workshop had us sketching an app for a specific audience, encouraging us to think critically about our users needs and what they would prefer seeing.
The exhibition opened my eyes in ways i didn’t expect. Both through physical shock and a change in perspective”. Eloïse D.
“I found this experience to be super eye-opening and real, in terms of all the things happening around the world. Even though most of it was pretty graphic and upsetting, I still learned about many things when going for a walk through the exhibition and interacting with different electronic devices that were installed as well. I was told how the Nobel Peace Center operated and discovered some of the Nobel Peace Prize winners as well as their story. Very interesting!” Sophie H-LC
