Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-15T05:51:04.976Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gazing at Fiction in Brussels: Europe as Forgery in David Černý's Entropa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

Lina Zigelyte
Lina Zigelyte*
Affiliation:
Department of Art and Art History, University of Rochester, 424 Morey Hall, Rochester, NY 14627, USA. Email: lina.zigelyte@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores issues of visual representations and the interaction between fiction and reality in the making of the ‘idea of Europe’. It specifically focuses on David Černý's installation Entropa, exhibited at the headquarters of the Council of the European Union in 2009. The article argues that, despite the use of national stereotypes as the most characteristic representational element of the installation, Entropa does not limit itself to a sardonic critique of a political institution and a ridicule of national identities. Rather, it unveils the uneasiness of facing European identity as fiction. Entropa challenges the boundary between theatricality and reality, because it is exhibited in a political institution. The installation is addressed as a narrative of confusion, where fiction and fact interact in the construction of ideas on Europe, its history, politics, and culture. Therefore, the article concludes, such interaction potentially accommodates a critical standpoint towards the idea of Europe itself.

Type
Focus: Complexities of ‘Europe’
Information
European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 04 January 2012 , pp. 54 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References and Notes

1. For a comprehensive selection of images where the myth of the Rape of Europe is portrayed see Passerini, L. (2002) Il mito d'Europa. Radici antiche per nuovi simboli (Firenze: Giunti).Google Scholar
2.den Boer, P. (1993) Europe to 1914: the making of an idea. In: K. Wilson and J. van der Dussen (eds.) The History of the Idea of Europe (London, New York: Routledge), p. 50.Google Scholar
3.den Boer, P. (1993) Europe to 1914: the making of an idea. In: K. Wilson and J. van der Dussen (eds.) The History of the Idea of Europe (London, New York: Routledge), p. 35.Google Scholar
4.Hay, D. (1968) Europe: The Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 86–87.Google Scholar
5.Bauman, Z. (2004) Europe: an Unfinished Adventure (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 2.Google Scholar
6. Interestingly, in Cosmographia the map was illustrating the chapter ‘How to practice studying the maps of Europe’. See Hoenselaars, T. (1993) Europe staged in English Renaissance drama. In: Yearbook of European Studies. Borders and Territories, 6, pp. 85–113, here p. 104.Google Scholar
7.Fokke, A. (1804) Geheimzinnige toebereidselen tot eene boertige reis door Europa (Te Haarlem: François Bohn), p. 126.Google Scholar
8. The catalogue of euros presented for the competition is available at http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/euro_catalogueen.pdf [retrieved 31 March, 2010].Google Scholar
9.Schmid, J. (2001) Etching the notes of a new European identity. International Herald Tribune, 3 August 2001. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/03/news/03iht-euro_ed3_.html [retrieved 31 March, 2010].Google Scholar
10.Augé, M. (1995) Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (J. Howe, trans.) (London, New York: Verso).Google Scholar
11.Borneman, J., Fowler, N. (1997) Europeanization. In: Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, pp. 497–514, here p. 488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12.Hay, D. (1968) Europe: The Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), p. 1.Google Scholar
13.Bourdon, J. (2007) Unhappy engineers of the European soul: The EBU and the woes of pan-European television. In: International Communication Gazette, 69(3), pp. 263–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14. The official booklet of Entropa is available at http://www.eu2009.cz/scripts/file.php?id=8282&down=yes [retrieved 31 March, 2010].Google Scholar
15.White, H. (1973) Metahistoy: The Historical Imagination of in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, London: John Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
16.Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, New York: Verso).Google Scholar
17.Hobsbawm, E. (2003) Mass-producing traditions: Europe, 1870–1914. In: E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.) Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
18.Gellner, E. (2006) Nations and Nationalism (Malden, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell).Google Scholar
19.Bauman, Z. (2004) Europe: an Unfinished Adventure (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 5.Google Scholar
20.Bauman, Z. (2004) Europe: an Unfinished Adventure (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 36.Google Scholar
21.Radnóti, S. (1999) The Fake: Forgery and Its Place in Art (E. Dunai, trans.) (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), p. 5.Google Scholar
22.Benjamin, W. (1969) The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In: M. G. Durham and D. Kellner (eds.) Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (Malden, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell), pp. 18–40.Google Scholar
23.Ryan, J. and Thomas, A. (2003 (eds.) Cultures of Forgery. Making Nations, Making Selves (London, New York: Routledge), p. ix.Google Scholar
24.Ryan, J. and Thomas, A. (2003 (eds.) Cultures of Forgery. Making Nations, Making Selves (London, New York: Routledge), p. x.Google Scholar
25.White, H. (1973) Metahistoy: The Historical Imagination of in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, London: John Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
26. Černý statement on Entropa is available on the artist's website at http://www.davidcerny.cz/start.html [retrieved 31 March, 2010].Google Scholar
27.Davis, T. (2003) Theatricality and civil society. In: T. Davis and T. Postlewait (eds) Theatricality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 149.Google Scholar
28.Postlewait, T. and Davis, T. (2003) Theatricality: an introduction. In: T. Davis and T. Postlewait (eds) Theatricality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 6.Google Scholar
29.Davis, T. (2003) Theatricality and civil society. In: T. Davis and T. Postlewait (eds) Theatricality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 148.Google Scholar
30.Bleeker, M. (2007) Theatre of/or truth. In: Performance Paradigm, 3. Available at: http://www.performanceparadigm.net/ [retrieved 31 March, 2010] p. 14.Google Scholar
31.Appadurai, A. (1990) Disjuncture and difference in the global Cultural economy. Public Culture, 2(2), pp. 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32.Bartlova, M. (2009) Evropská unie má právo na karneval. In: Literární noviny. 2 February, 2009. Available at http://www.literarky.cz/svet/blizky-vychod/307- [retrieved 31 March, 2009].Google Scholar
33.McKenzie, J. (2001) Perform or Else. From Discipline to Performance (London, New York: Routledge), p. 148.Google ScholarPubMed
34.Wilshire, B. (1982) Role Playing and Identity. The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), p. 283.Google Scholar
35.Herzfeld, M. (1992) The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 71–97.Google Scholar
36.Pocock, J. G. A. (2002) Some Europes in their history. In: A. Pagden (ed.) The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 56.Google Scholar
37.Bauman, Z. (2004) Europe: an Unfinished Adventure (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 9.Google Scholar
38.Heller, A. (1991) Europe – an epilogue? In: A. Heller and F. Feher (eds) The Postmodern Political Condition (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 147.Google Scholar
39.Heller, A. (1991) Europe – an epilogue? In: A. Heller and F. Feher (eds) The Postmodern Political Condition (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 154.Google Scholar
40.Heller, A. (1991) Europe – an epilogue? In: A. Heller and F. Feher (eds) The Postmodern Political Condition (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 148.Google Scholar