As we are seeing the success that is the Y2K Revival trend swooping all over the world, it is important to look back at that era and ask: Whose 2000’s are we really reviving?

For many people outside Western Europe and the US, the Y2K’s were very different from the images that are circulated today. While the kids in the UK were buying their first PS1s, or even PS2s, in Post-Communist countries bootleg versions of the SNES or SEGA Genesis remained popular throughout the 90’s and 00’s, only to be eventually replaced by the personal home computer. Only throughout the 90’s and the 2000’s did 80’s and 90’s American hits and trends become part of local mainstream culture. Even today, it seems that we are always 10 years behind the current mainstream US culture.

So the question is: How “Y2K” was 2000’s Eastern Europe compared to its Western counterpart?
Can we collectively look back at that era and critically analyze our past and current cultural and digital situation? What do we stand to gain?

These are some of the questions the 12 selected artists have also asked themselves; be it through collage, painting, video art, or even miniature models. From questions about self-colonization, nostalgia and commodity fetishism, second generation or mixed migrant identity, to even the emergence of established virtual communities - the recurring element is the self-gaze, always both critical and supportive, both emmancipatory and reflecting, highly personal while still socially aware.

For each artwork, the artist was asked to write a short personal reflection on the work and the context around. This was done in an effort to give more agency to the artists and to capture their unique, personal voice.

With the help of The Wrong Biennale, Apartament 6, an independent collective based in Iași, Romania, aims to document the collective memories that the Eastern side of the European continent holds of the 2000's.

Artists are invited to share artworks that reflect their own personal experience of living through Y2K, with the focus being on how Western trends and consumer goods have been integrated in the broader Eastern European space.

Be it your first time seeing Disney Channel on the TV to your first LAN party to pretend-playing Counterstrike with your friends on the street, we are especially interested in personal stories and artworks that show the merging of Eastern spaces with Western (intelectual) products.

Selected artworks will be shown online, on a The Wrong Biennale pavilion: a dedicated website where visitors will be able to browse the Balkan Y2K submissions in an interactive virtual environment similar to the old Wolfenstein 3D/ DOOM games.

We believe that this choice better reflects the Eastern/ Western dichotomies present during the early 2000s.

This project is self-funded and a love letter to the places we grew up in.