Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit, which develops alternative parliaments for stateless political organizations excluded from democracy, and the New World Academy (together with BAK, Utrecht), which invites artists and students to work together with stateless organizations. He is also the initiator of the Ideological Guide to the Venice Biennale, a free smartphone app that provides insight on the social, political, economic, and overall ideological backgrounds of every pavilion in the 2013 Biennale. His upcoming book Nosso Lar, Brasília (Capacete & Jap Sam Books, 2014) investigates the relationship between spiritism and modernism in Brazilian architecture. Staal is currently working on his PhD on art and propaganda in the twenty-first century at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands.