ALASTAIR LAAS  


Project

Global Citizen

Show One - Lethaby Gallery, King’s Cross, London.

2018
Global Citizen

Show One (2018) – Curated by Alex Landrum, Lethaby Gallery, King’s Cross, London.

Artists: Fabio Dartizio, Sofia Bonato, Alastair Laas, Tom Cardew, Aleksandr Tishkov, Boaz Torfstein, Camila Gonzalez Corea, Emma Starkey, Helen Pilkington, Hyun Ah Kwon, Joe Richardson, Jolanta Basova, Kang Gao, Katarina Rankovic, Marco Bertuzzo, Marco Pantaleoni, Mariia Fedorova, Marylyn Molisso, Natalie Lambert, Orna Kazimi, Pierre-Antoine Martin, Shu Zhang, Theresa Goessmann, Tiffany Howe, Tingwei Liang, Vanessa Delp, Xinyi Feng, Xuefei Li, Yuqi Wei
Global Citizen was presented as part of 'Show One', a group exhibition at the Lethaby Gallery, King's Cross, London. The project operated as a contained system rather than a collection of discrete works. Jointly, it provided a proto-infrastructure for understanding how identity, emotion, and participation are shaped within globalised cultural frameworks.

At its core, Global Citizen examined the soft governance of behaviour: how individuals are invited to participate, express themselves, and feel "seen," while simultaneously being disciplined into legibility. The work addressed a moment in which citizenship, selfhood, and emotional expression were increasingly mediated by interfaces, branding, and institutional language.

The project comprised four interconnected works:

'Ciracade' functioned as an architectural loop, a playful yet coercive environment that simulated freedom while quietly enforcing repetition and compliance. Movement was permitted, but only within predefined limits.

'Slightly Smiling Face, Disappointed Face, Face Without Mouth' reduced emotional expression to a restricted set of sanctioned states. Affect became a selectable interface: recognisable, neutralised, and safe. The absence of a mouth suggested not silence, but the removal of speech as a necessary function.
'CondemNation' presented language as both accusation and collective identity. The work collapsed condemnation and nationhood into a single visual register, exposing how moral judgment and belonging are often produced through the exact mechanisms.

Together, these works formed an early emotional training ground and a space where participation was encouraged, but agency was constrained; where identity was visible but flattened; where systems appeared benign while quietly exceeding the lives moving through them.

Although produced in an academic context, Global Citizen marked the beginning of a longer enquiry into para-fictional systems, affective infrastructure, and the banal architectures of control. The logic developed here in systems that resemble neutral frameworks, while disciplining bodies and emotions, continues to underpin a wider practice.