Jonas Staal is an artist and PhD fellow at the University of Leiden, Leiden, where he researches the relationship between art and propaganda in the twenty-first century. Staal founded the artistic and political organization New World Summit, which develops alternative parliaments for stateless organizations banned from democratic discourse, as well as, together with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, the New World Academy, an alternative learning platform that brings together stateless political organizations, artists, and students. Staal’s work includes interventions in public space, exhibitions, lectures, and publications focusing on the relationship between art, politics, and ideology.

Jonas Staal holds a degree in architecture, and from that time he cannot shake the dark memory of a female colleague who developed a perfect prison during her studies, one where prisoners would pass through a series of increasingly less oppressive spaces—always in connection with an improvement in behavior—until eventually regaining their freedom. Later, his colleague, Fleur Agema, in the department of interior design, reached the second spot on the electoral list of the extreme right-wing PVV, Partij voor de Vrijheid (the Party for Freedom).