If jokes could still be taken seriously today, ours might start like this: Several people meet at a castle: an artistic blacksmith, wire-makers, a wanderer above a sea of intoxicating fog, a member of the Schlaraffia humor society, and other characters who didn’t fit onto our brief list, for which we apologize. Of course, we almost forgot the mischievous vampire – after all, those with inside knowledge have long spoken of the zombification of contemporary art. Nevertheless, our fear of the undead is quickly drowned out – there’s apples rolling towards us from somewhere. They want to warm their tattooed flesh by a smoking stove being obligingly stoked by a helpful frog. Around the corner, a feathered being, lost in thought, is shedding silvery tears, and somewhere in the distance marionettes wrapped in blankets breathe heavily on a bed. And now you ask, “Where’s the joke?” and you’d be right to. Have we been lying to you all this time, and the joke is at your expense?

You may smile at this confusion – after all, saying one thing and meaning the exact opposite is the home turf of irony, that unreliable flip-flopper between words and meaning. You will surely have absorbed the cynical lesson of postmodern culture – after all, you are familiar with the cool detachment of the strangely neurotic characters from nineties sitcoms who lack any honest motivation and whose only weapon against vulnerability is to laugh at the world and themselves. But let us also look back to the time of the Romantics, for we often forget that they saw irony as an important strategy for surviving in the modern world, a place dominated by the sense of having lost a direct connection with nature. Unlike postmodern ironists with their sarcastic grimaces, however, they are not afraid to come face to face with our true desire to be one with the world. For them, irony is a salve or at least a homeopathic remedy for transcending their conditioned perspective and adopting an objective view of themselves. And yet, it is not an end in and of itself but reflects the inevitability of finding the will to overcome the chasm between oneself and the outside world despite the curse that this effort will not succeed and the desire will remain unfulfilled.

Let’s get straight to the point. Yes, this chasm has not been overcome. Instead, we are too closely bound to a globalized world built on market principles of (self-)exploitation and opaque digital networks, a world drained of any meaning. It is an imbalanced relationship, one whose weight not only breaks the backs of individuals but that also awakens various monsters. How can one perceive an authentic awakening of emotions in the era of social networks if they are subject to the algorithmization and marketization of personal expression and go against lived experience? Is the sharing of art online a true sharing of creativity, or is it merely a narcissistic means for artists to build their careers? How can one even draw the line between expressing oneself and slipping into constant commodification? Is it even possible today to exhibit, with a straight face, things that we call contemporary art at a castle?

And so post-irony raises its voice, looming as the last refuge in a storm of confused meanings. It resists, like a lost sentinel surrounded by hordes of images plundering the last remnants of our interest within the late attention economy. Instead of trying to find something profoundly serious, it allows us to see what is real and what is artificial. It is two sides of the same coin, spinning it in constant motion. It becomes a stance that uses this ambiguity as a game in which it is no longer shameful to breathe new life into antiquated ways of doing things. Silent film, landscape painting, stained wood, embroidery, and even metalwork and wirework incite their relevance just as much as the latest digital technologies. Post-irony provides a chance to openly embrace the universal as well as the literal, to tell exaggerated tales of a fictitious life, and to not be afraid of geysers of fake blood or blood-thirsty beings – despite the fact that it all feel suspicious in relation to today’s over-intellectualized art. Post-irony is perhaps not so far removed from the world of the Romantics. It personifies the ongoing game of detachment and identification, the constant variation of heart-rending tales and subsequent disappointments. In actuality, there is no deception here: the truth rests in accepting that essentially all meanings are surrounded by uncertainty. It’s a joke with an open ending. Don’t worry: you have to believe us that it’s about everything – just not a lie.