A creative project about replacement and simulation

From the onset of World War I, German military replacement battalions became an active part of the conflict. Due to the intensity and gravity of the war, these substitute troops were urgently needed and stood in, massively, for the depleted forces and soldiers who were originally intended to fight. As the war dragged on and Germany faced a blockade from 1914 to 1919, thousands of substitute products - from groceries to industrial tools - were developed and sold across Europe to face the growing scarcity of the wartime economy. 

Ersatz has since become a common name to describe these replacement goods, services, brands, experiences, and situations. The German word literally means substitute or replacement.
While in English, it generally means that the substitution is of unsatisfactory or inferior quality compared with the "real thing", in German there is no such implication.

ERSATZ is a year-long art project that explores the creative potential of the ideas of replacement and simulation in contemporary societies.

It challenges and interrogates the concept of authenticity in an age of endless mechanical and digital reproduction, biological simulation, distributed and chaotic identity formation. 

The project will employ a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating multiple art forms, interactive installations, and narrative storytelling to create immersive experiences that challenge participants and audience to reflect on the relevance of authenticity as a qualifier in the 21st century. 

Through a series of artworks, articles, open calls, curated exhibitions, online discussions, and community engagements, ERSATZ will bring together artists and audiences to engage with the often indistinguishable boundaries between the genuine and the artificial, and to provoke a deeper contemplation on the nature of reality itself in our increasingly complex and mediated socio-political environment.