Patrik Ourednik - Europeana

Hailed by critics as an (im)pertinent and nonconformist stroll through the last century, Europeana (2001) aims to give us a glimpse into the invariable stupidity of humanity over a hundred years. A time of universal panaceas, of alliances between technology and evil, and of collective hysteria, the 20th century of Europeana, in the light of the statistics of a frenetic narrator, becomes a burlesque darkness, a breathtaking grotesque enumeration, in which the Bolshevik revolution, Barbies, and Scientology coexist. In the end, the question remains: has this barbaric century really ended? Following in the footsteps of Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet, the false naiveté of Voltaire's Candide, and in a style à la Kurt Vonnegut, Europeana highlights the emptiness of clichés and stereotypes and the authoritarianism of discourses of knowledge, in order to better combat them.