The Prankster Presidency

The French Presidency of the EU turned out to be less fun than I thought it would be. There turned out to be enough real crises for Sarkozy to satisfy his desire for action and grandstanding, and well, he did manage those quite well.

The Czechs, though, seem to be living up to my expectations. The Czech artist David Cerny has created an art installation that displays stereotypes of various European countries, which the Czech presidency has installed in the atrium of the European Council building. This has kicked up a minor media storm, also because he stated it was the work of 27 European artists when it turned out to be only his. Here's a part of his explanation:

At the beginning stood the question: What do we really know about Europe? We have information about some states, we only know various tourist clichés about others. We know basically nothing about several of them. The art works, by artificially constructed artists from the 27 EU countries, show how difficult and fragmented Europe as a whole can seem from the perspective of the Czech Republic. We do not want to insult anybody, just point at the difficulty of communication without having the ability of being ironic.

Grotesque hyperbole and mystification belongs among the trademarks of Czech culture and creating false identities is one of the strategies of contemporary art. The images of individual parts of Entropa use artistic techniques often characterised by provocation. The piece thus also lampoons the socially activist art that balances on the verge between would-be controversial attacks on national character and undisturbing decoration of an official space. We believe that the environment of Brussels is capable of ironic self-reflection, we believe in the sense of humour of European nations and their representatives.

Go watch the art on Kosmopolito or FP Passport.