The online program Reality – Fiction at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) focuses on artistic practices that explore hidden dimensions of reality in the interplay of reality and fiction, and which allow the not-yet-conceived, the not-yet-perceived, or even the historically repressed to become visible.

The attempt to take possession of the world of objects and images by means of speculative narratives and to formulate new perspectives on politics and society can be found in numerous aesthetic practices. In Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love, 2001), one of Jean-Luc Godard’s later works, the filmmaker refers to the philosopher Henri Bergson: “You can only think about something if you think of something else.” As one of the most influential directors of the 1960s and key proponent of the Nouvelle Vague art film movement, Godard created a cinematic language that rejects illustrative gestures and relies instead on a multi-perspective view committed to critical analysis of the present.

Godard’s late films refer to a way of seeing that does not yet exist or is still developing — viewing in layers with an archaeological eye, which does not structure the world from a center, but rather offers an imaginative historical orientation in numerous directions. Based on Godard’s visual language, the contributions to the online program Reality – Fiction discuss how history, social movements, suppressed forms of existence, excluded knowledge, and the transgression of boundaries are formulated in film, literature, and visual art in a multi-perspective way.