pro-EU experience?

Here’s a short note on the memorial project and a political edge:

The pictures with smiling faces and (deconstructed) EU flags demonstrate a happy relationship with the Union. The aim as such was not to collect happy pictures of EU membership but to investigate the relationship. It happened to be great weather in Sibiu, when I was making this action. Furthermore, it was the end of school year. And a festival year in town. Those with more negative things to say about the EU generally did not engage with the memorial.

What the booklet with descriptions of Europe reveals more than the pictures is the ambiguity about the future. The happiness of being in and the uneasiness of how this journey and this membership in a supranational organisation will go.

Personally, I’m curious how the response would be in the other member states of the EU. Whether there would be hostility towards the EU, and by consequence the “memorial” – and what would be the impact of the casual play with the symbols.

Noteworthy about Sibiu is the way in which people thought it generally as natural to be re-designining the old symbol – though in their experience it was a new one. In contrast, the Dutch, German and French passers-by were more reluctant to engage in the deconstruction-reconstruction process, and preferred “the old design”.

A memorial, generally is pro or contra something and crucially invites a debate on these visions (John Gillis makes this point in his book Commemorations) as the platform where they have been incribed. Erecting an EU memorial as such is a pro-EU act – unless it would be an anti-memorial (see below), here, though the relatively flexible character of it was to invite new and multiple visions of that. Even a temporary memorial in public space could start a debate or conversation over the real possibility of such openness. This memorial webpage, being in the virtual public realm, could also offer a platform on that discussion.