New World Summit
1:1 Model / Assembly
Failed Democracy
Stateless Democracy
Future Democracy
Title | New World Summit Utrecht
Concept | Jonas Staal
Commisioned by | Studio Jonas Staal
Type | 1:1 Model / Assembly
Date | 29-31 January 2016
Location | Aula, Utrecht University
Architecture | Paul Kuipers
Production Coordinator | Younes Bouadi
Construction | Landstra & de Vries
Photography | Ernie Buts and Jan Boeve
Images process | Paul Kuipers
Text | Jonas Staal
New World Summit Utrecht
The New World Summit is an artistic and political organization that develops parliaments with and for stateless states, autonomist groups, and blacklisted political organizations. The sixth summit, entitled Stateless Democracy, took the form of an assembly that explored the possibilities of uncoupling the practice of democracy from the construct of the nation-state. Core speakers were representatives of the Kurdish Revolutionary Movement, which in 2012 declared Rojava, the northern part of Syria, an autonomous ‘stateless democracy’ based on principles of self-governance, gender-equality, and communal economy.
For this sixth summit a temporary parliament was built in the aula of Utrecht University. It was in this hall that the Union of Utrecht was signed in 1579, which was to become one of the foundations of the Dutch state. The parliament was thus also a historical intervention, reaching back to the very origins of the Dutch state to engage its alternative in the form of stateless democracy. On the first day, enlargements of Guantánamo Bay prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary were installed in the parliament; on the second day, a confederalist collage of the universalist symbols and flags of the key organizations and movements of the Rojava Revolution were displayed; and on the third day, the slogan with question mark ‘Future Democracy?’ was suspended as a series of banners in the different languages of the summit participants.
Version New World Summit Utrecht