Linz Adagia - Ersamus Proverbs (Blue Cloak) Folly of the World. Ars Electronica Futurelab Residency

Blue Cloak is an ongoing project creating/re-creating ‘contemporary proverbs’ – across a range of media and outputs – involving new collaborations with a number of artists. Taking as its departure point ‘proverbs’ – eg. how do you question / undermine global folly – politicians – military – commerce – artists….. we are all guilty of folly in some way. Context: Erasmus published a book of proverbs in 1500/1508 – this influenced Brueghel’s ‘Blue Cloak’ (Netherlandish Proverbs in 1559) – the ‘Folly of the World’. Many of the adages have become commonplace in many European languages, and we owe our use of them to Erasmus.