Congress of Utopia
(Project by Lara & Jonas Staal)
Installation
by Jonas Staal
The Congress of Utopia was organized for the occasion of the five-hundred-year anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia. In recent times, the term utopia has increasingly become equated with totalitarian tendencies. The Congress of Utopia instead aimed to reclaim the importance of utopia as a means to imagining new models of transdemocratic politics.
The Congress of Utopia took place in an installation that reconstructed on a 1:1 scale fragments of the project New Babylon designed by the artist-utopian Constant Nieuwenhuys. As such, the Congress of Utopia did not aim to merely reflect upon the history of utopia, but to ‘occupy utopia’ anew. In the face of the present day global dystopian crisis, utopia was posited as the only realistic alternative.
Project | Congress of Utopia
Concept | Lara & Jonas Staal
Commisioned by | Studio Jonas Staal
Type | Installation / Assembly
Date | November 5, 2016
Location | Frascati Theater, Amsterdam
Architecture | Paul Kuipers
Production Coordinator | Younes Bouadi
Photography (top) | Ernie Buts
Images (down): Paul Kuipers
Link | www.frascatitheater.nl