New World Summit

Installation / Assembly




New World Summit
Project and Text by Jonas Staal

The city of Brussels embodies the crisis of the state. It is the site of an ongoing conflict over the existence of Belgium as a federal state as well the declining supranational project of the European Union. The rise of ultranationalism, which considers the EU to be a threat, calls for a return to the nation-state as the only way to regain sovereignty, control migration, and secure economic prosperity. At the same time, this myth of the sovereign state itself has been dismantled through, for example, whistleblowers’ recent revelations of global systems of mass surveillance. It is in the light of the crisis of the state that we are witnessing the rise of international protests and social movements. The attack of the state against its own citizens, through mass surveillance and politics of blacklisting, indicates that today’s condition of statelessness is on the verge of becoming a collective one.

The visual design of the parliament departs from the form of an arena, in which a variety of alternative historiographies are introduced and debated. 
In collaboration with each of the participating organizations, maps were conceived that represent the specific territory and/or political model these organizations laid claim to. In a large alternative world map situated in the back of the parliament all of these ‘stateless states’ were assembled as an ‘alternative world map:’ not the world as it has been narrated by victors, but a world in the making through struggle.

Colophon

Project | Steve Bannon A Propaganda Retrospective
Concept | Jonas Staal
Commisioned by | Jonas Staal
Type | Installation / Assembly
Date | September 19-21, 2014
Location | Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg Brussels
Architecture | Paul Kuipers
Visual Identity | Remco van Bladel
Production Coordinator | Younes Bouadi
Photography (top) | Ernie Buts