About the author

The author of this intervention, memorial and a site is Emilia Palonen.

“I have been working on political memorials, commemorative street names and public art in general since 1999. I have been thinking about the way in which the city-text works and how public commemoration occurs, mainly in the contexts of Budapest and London. In Eastern Europe there has been a change on the street names and statues, which was the topic of my doctoral research. Going to Sibiu, during the postdoc project I started wondering how would the new era be made present in the commemorative statues not just the street furniture (fountains, benches, and the new square tiles in the inner city, Piata Mare and outside in the newly built or renovated areas). I started wondering how the EU membership and the Sibiu’s European Capital of Culture year that started 1.1.2007 could be commemorated.

Playing with the ideas of temporary and mobile memorials (in the tradition of the counter-memorials and beyind) and the concepts of interactivity, I came up with an urban intervention which would be truly temporary, mobile and interactive. Rather than simply putting the EU membership in the canon of historical experience of Romania, it would seek to gain reinterpretations of it, through multiple processes of deconstruction and reconstruction.

For me, it was very exciting to see how people related to the memorial. There was a joy of encountering a surprise in the daily environment. The people first were a bit hesitant and later became enthusiastic to engage with this canonised EU flag design. The experience of communicating sometimes without a common language or with the help of other people around was also a crucial part of the EU memorial as a process.

I set up this website to follow up the process. The voices about the multiplicity of the meanings and visions of Europe should not be wasted. Perhaps it could be repeated in other cities and parts of Europe too. To collect a database of designs and visions, and to record a range of perspectives and attitudes, which may be different outside Sibiu, where the response was generally very positive among the people who participated in and reacted to the action.”

Emilia Palonen, PhD, is a researcher on politics, identity and discourses with focus on Europe as a cultural-political sphere. She participated in the Bauhaus Kolleg 2006-07, developing her skills of an academic and an activist towards those of a cultural worker – realising how these are not necessarily, and should not outrightly be declared as, such distinct categories.

She also hosts a work blog polemics. You can comment or email her to get in touch.