From the Czech presidency’s ominous start with the gas crisis in the previous Europe blog, they faced a diplomatic predicament of an altogether more jocular sort last week as the ‘Entropa: Borders without Barriers’ was unveiled in front of the European Council building in Brussels on the 12th January…writes Lara Natale
Enfant terrible of the Czech art world David Černý was commissioned to oversee the project by Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra, (who incidentally is known for being rather wry and dry humoured). But Černý breeched the terms of his contract after it emerged Entropa was conceived and executed by him alone, as opposed to being the intended collaboration between artists of the 27 member states. It was also anticipated to be a model of cultural diplomacy -a mosaic of the EU countries suspended in a giant grid with a space for a representation of each state- but by depicting controversial and at times iconoclastic, albeit often stereotypical, elements of various nations it has actually enraged members of the international community. Indeed, many have dubbed it a ‘hoax’. Vondra says: “David Černý bears the full responsibility for not fulfilling his assignment and promise. In this situation we are now considering which steps to take.” Černý had concocted a list of fictitious contributors (complete with statements and biographies) in the accompanying brochure to ensure his work reached the stage of unveiling: now he has waived his fee and defended his work, explaining that he contrived to discern “whether Europe is able to laugh at itself”.
So why all the brouhaha? Here is a full description of each country’s section:
• Austria, a known opponent of atomic energy, is a green field dominated by nuclear power plant cooling towers; vapour is coming out of them at intervals
• Belgium is presented as a half-full box of half-eaten Praline chocolates
• Bulgaria is depicted by a series of connected “Turkish” squat toilets; neon-like lights connect and illuminate them
• Cyprus is jigsawed (cut) in half
• The Czech Republic’s own piece is an LED display, flashing controversial quotations by Czech President Vaclav Klaus
• Denmark is built of Lego bricks, and some claim to see in the depiction a face reminiscent of the 2006 cartoon controversy, though any resemblance has been denied by the artist
• Estonia is presented with a hammer and sickle-styled power tools, the country has considered a ban on Communist symbols
• Finland is depicted as a wooden floor and an [apparently drunk] male with a rifle, imagining various animals
• France is draped in a “GRÈVE!” (“STRIKE! “) banner
• Germany is a series of interlocking autobahns, described as “somewhat resembling a swastika”, though that is not universally accepted. The cars move along the roads.
• Greece is depicted as a forest that is entirely burned, possibly representing the 2007 Greek forest fires and the civil unrest in Greece.
• Hungary features an Atomium made of its common agricultural products melons and Hungarian sausages, based on a floor of peppers
• Ireland is depicted as a brown bog with bagpipes protruding from Northern Ireland; the bagpipes play music every five minutes
• Italy is depicted as a football pitch with over-enthused players
• Latvia is shown as covered with mountains, in contrast to its actual flat landscape
• Lithuania is a series of dressed Manneken Pis-style figures urinating on its eastern neighbours; the streams of urine are presented by a yellow lighting glass fibers
• Luxembourg is displayed as a gold nugget with a “For Sale” tag
• Malta is a tiny island with its prehistoric dwarf elephant as its only decoration; there’s a magnifying glass in front of the elephant
• The Netherlands has disappeared under the sea with only several minarets still visible the piece is supposed to emit the singing of muezzins
• Poland has a piece with priests erecting the rainbow flag of the Gay rights movement, in the style of the U.S. soldiers raising the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Juma.
• Portugal is shown as a wooden cutting board with three pieces of meat in the shape of its former colonies of Brazil, Angola and Mozambique
• Romania is a Dracula-style theme park, blinking and emitting ghostly sounds at intervals
• Slovakia is depicted as a Hungarian sausage (or a human body tightened by Hungarian tricolour)
• Slovenia is shown as a rock engraved with the words first tourists came here 1213
• Spain is covered entirely in concrete, with a concrete mixer situated near the Rioja region
• Sweden does not have an outline, but is represented as a large Ikea-style self-assembly furniture box, containing Gripen fighter planes (as supplied to the Czech Air Force)
• The United Kingdom, known for its Euroscepticism and relative isolation from the Continent, is “included” as a missing piece (an empty space) at the top-left of the work
Bulgaria submitted an official complaint about their depiction and the Czech ambassador was even summoned to Sofia: Betina Joteva, spokeswoman of the Bulgarian permanent representation to the EU “This is a humiliation for the Bulgarian nation and an offence to [our] national dignity.” Vondra offered to remove Bulgaria from the installation, however is adamant the rest will stay so as to attest that the censorship of art, however controversial, is not a practice that the EU condones.
And what to make of the UK’s inclusion/non-inclusion? Michael Archer in The Guardian muses: “What finer way to represent nearly four decades of whingeing, carping, fence-sitting and back-turning by our consistently insular political classes than to acknowledge the nation’s stubborn pretence that we’re not part of Europe at all?”
To view images please see http://news.bbc.co.uk
