NEWS
WORKS
ESSAYS
CONTACT
No need to hide, welcome inside, watch the pink elephants dancing. Tomato icebergs, floating around you, try to unwind, see what you find, it´s a state of mind. Wont you please try to be kind, wont you please try to be kind?Kenneth Thordal, National Anthem of Pink State. 2007
No need to hide, welcome inside, watch the pink elephants dancing. Tomato icebergs, floating around you, try to unwind, see what you find, it´s a state of mind. Wont you please try to be kind, wont you please try to be kind?
Kenneth Thordal, National Anthem of Pink State. 2007
Pink State
Throughout the month of June 2005, soil, rocks and trees from Austria and its neighbouring countries were collected and driven to the town of Dornbirn, located in the region of Austria that borders on to Liechtenstein, Germany and Switzerland. Here, in the exhibition space of Kunstraum Dornbirn, all the various elements were assembled into a new landscape, offering comfort and leisure. Amongst other, there was a lake with red water, where you could go fishing and a tent for camping out in. The single end wall was decorated with a giant photocopy of a red iceberg. On 23 June 2005 a new state saw the light of day. A state based on peace, harmony and love. For a couple of months one could take ones passport and visit Pink State within the walls of the exhibition space, Kunstraum Dornbirn.
Pink State was a bastard state, created by Marco Evaristti, out of good, useful, equal elements from various existing states, including Evaristtis own transient red iceberg from his 2004 Ice Cube Project in the Arctic Ocean. Before entering, guests were welcomed by the countrys mascot, the pink elephant, and the national flag.
Since the first Pink State other pink states have been founded, out of the blue and just as transitory. In summer 2007 Evaristti once again raised the flag of the Pink State on the summit of Mont Blanc. Prior to this Evaristti had transformed Mont Blanc into Mont Rouge, as part of his collective trilogy (Note. See Wamberg p.) As well as the flag, Evaristti set up a post box to receive applications for citizenship.
As an important contrast to the traditional definition of state in international law, the very transience of Pink State is essential to its foundation. That is evident in the national anthem, the constitution and the states website. Pink State is, first and foremost, a state of mind.
A non-existent states existential ideology
In the second section of the constitution there is a list of what seems to constitute the states ideology:
- Be good to yourself.
- Be good to other people.
- Respect nature.
The apparent naivety that seems to reign over this state is balanced by the important themes it reflects. We are talking about a kind of legal art that deals with the territorial rights that are usually required for a state to exist, in terms of international law.
A brief look at Evaristtis other works and the accusation of naivety soon disappears. He is not at all afraid of confronting those who view his works, preferably with subjects that people do not usually like talking about. The confrontational aspect of founding a state based on peace and love is the implicit criticism of the fact, that these values are often subservient to the demands of international law: territorial demands. In state terms, a territory is an area with boundaries, which belongs to the state. This is the most important, fundamental requirement for a state, a requirement that leads to wars, when the lines on a map have to be drawn.
The right to possess is not the states alone. It is also the right of the individual and, in our culture, it is regulated by right of ownership. It is also manifested in the Ten Commandments. In the constitution of Pink State, section VI, these are rewritten. That means, that in Pink State you are permitted to covet your neighbours house and anything else he owns. So it is the whole existential concept of ownership that Pink State is challenging. And Pink State raises major questions regarding what the world would be like without this strict, incontrovertible right.
Pink elephants and the ideology of the 70s
There is something both humorous and serious about Pink State. But do not be deceived by the pink colours disarming effect. While, on one hand, the pink elephant suggests a homage to the experimental, hallucinogenic visions of the 70s, on the other hand it refers to a time that was rich with powerful ideologies. The humanistic ideology of that period in particular, most easily expressed as peace, love and understanding, is the essence of the states constitution.
This is seen clearly in the states arsenal. In Paragraphs 23 and 24 of the constitution, it is stated that weapons are forbidden and the state has no army, navy or air force. They are not considered necessary in a state, which desires peace and has declared that territorial rights create unrest. So Pink States weapons consist of a range of castrated items: shotguns where the muzzle is an elephants trunk and hand-grenades where the top is an elephants head and the pin is a trunk.
Micro nations and macro nations
Other artists have played with idea of creating their own states. The Swedish artist Lars Vilks resorted to this solution after several years legal to-ing and fro-ing with the Swedish authorities concerning a couple of sculptures he had erected in a nature reserve on Kullen. In an attempt to prevent the carrying out of a judgment, which demanded the removal of the illegally erected sculptures, Vilks created the state of Ladonia in the same place, thus depriving Swedish law of its authority. (note)
A similar course of events can be said to have led to the Austrian artist Edwin Lipburgers declaration of the independent state of Kuglemugel. Kuglemugel is both a house and a work of art in the form of a round ball with a diameter of 7.68m, which Lipburger built in 1970. In 1984, after endless disagreements between the artist and the Austrian authorities concerning building permission for the orbed house, the artist declared independence for the republic of Kuglemugel, whose surface area was exactly the same as the orbs. (note)
Pink State was not founded in concrete opposition to someone or something, but it does have in common with other art states an ironic distance from the status quo, a desire to think differently and to turn established concepts upside down. Pink State provides a different way of considering relationships. We base much of our sense of identity on the place we belong to, and which belongs to us. So much that we are prepared to go to war to protect that place. Pink State does not require a particular, fixed territory. It is territorially transient.
Legal art (David) versus international law (Goliath)
It would seem that the ideology of Pink State has its roots in two earlier works by Evaristti. Partly The Ice Cube Project (along with the rest of the trilogy, realised in the following years) and partly the somewhat earlier Brotherhood Project. In Brotherhood Evaristti rejects religions power to divide people. His project is based on his belief in a fundamental common humanism and sense of brotherhood. The works confront the orthodox, as he uses himself and his Jewish origins in a range of photographs, in which he is seen performing with a Muslim woman. This includes them kissing and mixing blood.
While Brotherhood dealt with human beings relationships to one another, the trilogy dealt with the relationships between states, particularly the claim of a state to sovereignty under international law. Once again he used himself, this time not as a human being of particular origins, but as a human being up against the state. Like David fighting Goliath he challenged both the spoken and the written by declaring, This is my country! (note)
As an artist Evaristti has his artistic freedom of expression. And he uses this legal right when, time after time, he declares a new artistic territory, thus going against states demands for inviolability and sovereignty. The strength of Pink State lies in the display of its own transience by consciously disassociating itself from the requirement, under international law, of territoriality. Instead, with its state of mind condition, Pink State raises the question of exactly how human beings could be united.
Malou Erritzøe
© Copy Right Evaristti 2009
