reader 4 - Civic City

Transcription

READER
Strategie Stadträume 2010, Stadt Zürich
http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/oeffentlicher_raum/
heute_und_morgen/strategie/stadtraeume_2010.html.
Archigrafie—Schrift am Bau und im Öffentlichen Raum
Ausstellung im Architekturforum Zürich, Kurzdokumentation
Agnès Laube und Michael Widrig, 2009
„Staats-Idee“ und „Stilgewalt“, Anmerkungen zum Branding
und Propaganda-Pionier Hans Domizlaff
Richard Brem, o. Datum
aus: Derive
Brand States: Postmodern Power, Democratic Pluralism,
and Design
Metahaven
aus: E-Flux Journal, 2009
Europe Sans: History, Politics, and Protocol in the EU Image
Metahaven
aus: E-Flux Journal, 2009
Nur für den internen Gebrauch bestimmt.
Keine Weitergabe an Dritte.
4
ARCHIGRAFIE
Schrift am Bau und
im öffentlichen Raum
Ausstellung im
Architekturforum Zürich
27.8.09 — 3.10.09 //
Kurzdokumentation
Agnès Laube und Michael Widrig
ARCHITEKTUR UND SCHRIFT:
RIVALITÄT ZWEIER MEDIEN?
Gebäudebeschriftungen wirken sich auf die Architektur als deren Träger aus.
Mit ihrer unterschiedlichen Anordnung, Dichte und Ausprägung erzeugen sie auch
verschiedenartige Stimmungen im Stadtraum und prägen die unterschiedlichen
Quartiercharaktere mit. Beschriftungen haben orientierende, informierende und
identitätsstiftende Funktion. Sie sind Ausdruck von regionalen gestalterischen Kulturen und wirtschaftlicher Prosperität. Und sie sind Zeichen ihrer Zeit.
Die 2000-jährige Beziehungsgeschichte von Architektur und Schrift hat verschiedene Stadien durchlebt. War die Schrift ursprünglich integriert und der ausdrucksstarken Architektur untergeordnet, begann sie ab 1900, sich von dieser zu
emanzipieren. Sie löste sich von ihrem Untergrund, wurde eigenständiges, der
Architektur gleichgestelltes Element. Neben Gebäudekennzeichnungen wurden
Werbeschriften immer wichtiger und begannen, die Bauten zu «übertönen» bis hin
zu deren völliger Dominanz. Diese Entwicklung fand am Broadway, am Piccadilly
Circus und – am offensichtlichsten – in Las Vegas ihren Höhepunkt. Das ehemals
künstlerisch hochstehende Schriftenmaler- und Schilderhandwerk wurde durch
neue Technologien und rationellere Herstellungsweisen abgelöst.
Nach der Industrialisierung nahmen Werbebotschaften und – infolge der Elektrifizierung – Leuchtschriften rasant zu, waren in den Stadträumen bald allgegenwärtig und verwandelten diese zusehends in «literarische» Räume | k Architektur und Sprache.
Gebäudebezeichnungen und kommerzielle Werbeanlagen haben sich im 20. Jahrhundert zum eigenständigen populärkulturellen Phänomen gemausert und sind
Impressum Ausstellung
Idee und Kuratorium
Agnès Laube, Visuelle Kommunikation, Zürich und
Michael Widrig, Architekt, Kaufmann Widrig Architekten GmbH, Zürich
Verantwortlich Architekturforum Zürich
Lisa Ehrensperger und Mathias Heinz, Vorstand
Projektfotografie
Theodor Stalder, Thema Fotografie, Zürich
Illustrationen
it‘s raining elephants, Evelyne Laube und Nina Wehrle, Luzern/Berlin
nicht mehr wegzudenken. Was sich jedoch verändert hat, ist das spezifische gestalterische und technische Verhältnis zwischen ihrem Träger – der Fassade – und
den Schriftelementen.
Die Ausstellung zeigt anhand von historischen und aktuellen Beispielen das
Nebeneinander und Miteinander von Architektur und Grafik. Durch die bewusste
und respektvolle Auseinandersetzung mit der jeweils anderen Disziplin – unter Einbezug der Bedürfnisse von Bauherrschaften, Nutzern und Herstellern – können
neue Strategien für zukünftige Beschriftungsaufgaben entwickelt werden.
© Arge L-KW, 2009
ARCHITEKTUR UND SPRACHE:
ARCHITEKTUR «LESEN»?
Bau und Bezeichnung Gebäude sind für viele Jahre gebaute, räumlich-statische Strukturen. Über und zwischen sie
legt sich die in schnellerem Rhythmus wechselnde Schicht der Bezeichnungen. Namen und Symbole. Anders als
Menschen, die ihren Namen für immer tragen, ändert bei Gebäuden die Nutzung. Gebäudebeschriftungen beziehen sich
nur noch selten auf das Gebäude als Ganzes und in seiner zeitlichen Kontinuität. Dies ist ein Grund, warum die Architektur als Träger zu respektieren ist und alle zusätzlich angebrachten Elemente ihrer Intention folgen bzw. aus dieser
herausentwickelt oder an sie angepasst werden sollen. Territoriale und architektonische Kommunikation – solche im
öffentlichen Raum zwischen den Gebäuden, auf diese Bezug nehmend oder an diesen angebracht – hat verschiedeste
Funktionen: identifizierende, individualisierende, appellierende, evozierende, charakterisierende, suggestive, expressive… Gebäudebeschriftungen können zwischen der Architektur und den Betrachtern vermitteln oder sie von ihr
ablenken. Marken, die in keinem Zusammenhang mit der Funktion von Gebäuden stehen, weisen von diesen weg.
Was wir an Fassaden lesen, ist oft nicht identisch mit dem, was wir sehen, und umgekehrt. Ein Name oder eine Marke
kann ein Haus auch dann noch im Gedächtnis der Stadtbevölkerung weitertragen, wenn das Gebäude schon längst
jemand anderem gehört, anders genutzt wird oder abgebrochen ist. Ein Beispiel dafür ist der «Sunrise Tower» in ZürichOerlikon, der zuvor Diax-Tower genannt wurde, und der – kaum ist der neue Name im Gedächtnis verankert – von der
Credit Suisse bezogen wird. Auch das sogenannte «Globus-Provisorium» beim Hauptbahnhof Zürich, das längst eine
Coop-Filiale ist, belegt die Tatsache, dass sich Begriffe von dem einst damit gemeinten Bau ablösen und ganz verselbständigen können.
Sehen und Lesen Während die Disziplinen Architektur und Schrift auf der Entwurfs- und Anwendungsebene ähnlichen
gestalterisch-konstruktiven Gesetzmässigkeiten folgen, unterscheidet sich ihre Wahrnehmung fundamental. Architektur
wird ähnlich wie ein Bild als Ganzes erfasst und ist in ihrem Ausdruck «szenisch». Deshalb müsste in Bezug auf sie eher
von «Zeigegesten» als von «Lesbarkeit» gesprochen werden. Denn Beschriftungen folgen einer Logik, die den Blick auf
die Linie zwingt. Einen Text müssen wir von Anfang bis zum Ende lesen, wollen wir ihn verstehen. Bilder, dreidimensionale Objekte und Gebäude sind an sich richtungslos. Das Auge leistet zu deren Erfassung eine komplexe Feldarbeit,
tastet alles kreuz und quer ab. Je länger man hinschaut, desto tiefer wird der (erste) Bildeindruck, wobei man Details
und Ganzes simultan wahrnimmt, miteinander abstimmt und kombiniert, um so das Ganze permanent zu präzisieren.
Eine Folge davon ist, dass der Eindruck durch den Einfluss von Allem auf Alles etwas unstabil bleibt. Die Sprache sondert einzelne Teile aus dem Wahrnehmungsfeld aus, reiht sie als Begriffe nacheinander auf Zeilen, zu Texten mit einem
Anfang und Ende. Sie versieht Bildeindrücke mit prägnanten Zeichen (Buchstaben/Worte), löst diese in Begriffe auf
und gibt ihnen eine gewisse Festigkeit und Umrissenheit. Das «Erkennen» von Architektur liefert keine scharfen Unterschiede, kein einfaches Entweder-Oder. Sprachliche Wahrnehmung ist dagegen (vermeintlich) eindeutig und effizient.
Diese «Ökonomie» der Sprachzeichen ist wohl ein Grund, warum ihr bei Gebäudekennzeichnungen auch heute noch
meist der Vorrang gegeben wird. Während ein kleiner Schriftzug in der Lage ist, ein ganzes Gebäude zu dominieren,
fügen sich fragmentierte oder ornamental angewandte Schriften – da sie zum Bildhaften neigen – besser in die Architektur ein. Dies geschieht jedoch zum Preis einer reduzierten Lesbarkeit | k Functional Decoration.
Architektur- und Schrifttyp Neben ihrer Funktion als Bedeutungsvermittlerin ist die Schrift ein eigenständiger
Formenkanon. Das lateinische Alphabet mit seinen 26 Symbolen sieht seit über 2000 Jahren ungefähr gleich aus. In ihrer
inneren Struktur, ihrem Skelett, blieb unsere Schrift bis heute unangetastet. Schriftentwerfer – heute Fontdesigner genannt – formen also quasi nur das Fleisch am Knochen des Schriftskeletts. Jede Schrift ist Zeuge ihrer Entstehungszeit.
Gemäss Peter Behrens ist «die Schrift eines der sprechendsten Ausdrucksmittel jeder Stilepoche» und «gibt – nächst der
Architektur – das am meisten charakteristische Bild für die geistige Entwicklung eines Volkes». Die Nähe von Schrift- und
Architekturstil ist jedoch spätestens seit dem 20. Jahrhundert nicht mehr gegeben. Die Kriterien für die Wahl des geeigneten Fonts für eine Gebäudebeschriftung – sofern nicht eine Firmenschrift, ein Signet gegeben sind – haben sich in
Bezug auf historische, bestehende und neue Bauten verschoben. Woraus die Wahl oder den Entwurf der Schrift also
ableiten? Auch hier sind kontextuelle Handlungsweisen angemessen: Je nach Gebäude, Situation und gestellter Aufgabe
ist eine die architektonische Intention kontrastierende, unterstützende oder unterstreichende Schriftwahl sinnvoll.
Einführung 1
ARCHITEKTUR UND SPRACHE:
ARCHITEKTUR «LESEN»
Bau und Bezeichnung Gebäude sind für viele Jahre gebaute, räumlich-statische Strukturen. Über und zwischen sie
legt sich die in schnellerem Rhythmus wechselnde Schicht der Bezeichnungen. Namen und Symbole. Anders als
Menschen, die ihren Namen für immer tragen, ändert bei Gebäuden die Nutzung. Gebäudebeschriftungen beziehen sich
nur noch selten auf das Gebäude als Ganzes und in seiner zeitlichen Kontinuität. Dies ist ein Grund, warum die Architektur als Träger zu respektieren ist und alle zusätzlich angebrachten Elemente ihrer Intention folgen bzw. aus dieser
herausentwickelt oder an sie angepasst werden sollen. Territoriale und architektonische Kommunikation – solche im
öffentlichen Raum zwischen den Gebäuden, auf diese Bezug nehmend oder an diesen angebracht – hat verschiedeste
Funktionen: identifizierende, individualisierende, appellierende, evozierende, charakterisierende, suggestive, expressive… Gebäudebeschriftungen können zwischen der Architektur und den Betrachtern vermitteln oder sie von ihr
ablenken. Marken, die in keinem Zusammenhang mit der Funktion von Gebäuden stehen, weisen von diesen weg.
Was wir an Fassaden lesen, ist oft nicht identisch mit dem, was wir sehen, und umgekehrt. Ein Name oder eine Marke
kann ein Haus auch dann noch im Gedächtnis der Stadtbevölkerung weitertragen, wenn das Gebäude schon längst
jemand anderem gehört, anders genutzt wird oder abgebrochen ist. Ein Beispiel dafür ist der «Sunrise Tower» in ZürichOerlikon, der zuvor Diax-Tower genannt wurde, und der – kaum ist der neue Name im Gedächtnis verankert – von der
bauhaus
Credit Suisse bezogen wird. Auch das sogenannte «Globus-Provisorium» beim Hauptbahnhof Zürich, das längst eine
Coop-Filiale ist, belegt die Tatsache, dass sich Begriffe von dem einst damit gemeinten Bau ablösen und ganz verselbständigen können.
Sehen und Lesen Während die Disziplinen Architektur und Schrift auf der Entwurfs- und Anwendungsebene ähnlichen
gestalterisch-konstruktiven Gesetzmässigkeiten folgen, unterscheidet sich ihre Wahrnehmung fundamental. Architektur wird ähnlich wie ein Bild als Ganzes erfasst und ist in ihrem Ausdruck «szenisch». Deshalb müsste in Bezug auf sie
eher von «Zeigegesten» als von «Lesbarkeit» gesprochen werden. Denn Beschriftungen folgen einer Logik, die den Blick
CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS:
GARAMOND
auf die Linie zwingt. Einen Text müssen wir von Anfang bis zum Ende lesen, wollen wir ihn verstehen. Bilder, dreidimen-
Bodoni
sionale Objekte und Gebäude sind an sich richtungslos. Das Auge leistet zu deren Erfassung eine komplexe Feldarbeit,
tastet alles kreuz und quer ab. Je länger man hinschaut, desto tiefer wird der (erste) Bildeindruck, wobei man Details
und Ganzes simultan wahrnimmt, miteinander abstimmt und kombiniert, um so das Ganze permanent zu präzisieren.
Eine Folge davon ist, dass der Eindruck durch den Einfluss von Allem auf Alles etwas unstabil bleibt. Die Sprache sondert einzelne Teile aus dem Wahrnehmungsfeld aus, reiht sie als Begriffe nacheinander auf Zeilen, zu Texten mit einem
Anfang und Ende. Sie versieht Bildeindrücke mit prägnanten Zeichen (Buchstaben/Worte), löst diese in Begriffe auf
Clarendon
und gibt ihnen eine gewisse Festigkeit und Umrissenheit. Das «Erkennen» von Architektur liefert keine scharfen Unterschiede, kein einfaches Entweder-Oder. Sprachliche Wahrnehmung ist dagegen (vermeintlich) eindeutig und effizient.
Diese «Ökonomie» der Sprachzeichen ist wohl ein Grund, warum ihr bei Gebäudekennzeichnungen auch heute noch
meist der Vorrang gegeben wird. Während ein kleiner Schriftzug in der Lage ist, ein ganzes Gebäude zu dominieren,
Arnold Böcklin
fügen sich fragmentierte oder ornamental angewandte Schriften – da sie zum Bildhaften neigen – besser in die Architektur ein. Dies geschieht jedoch zum Preis einer reduzierten Lesbarkeit | k Functional Decoration.
futura
Helvetica
Akzidenz Grotesk
Architektur- und Schrifttyp Neben ihrer Funktion als Bedeutungsvermittlerin ist die Schrift ein eigenständiger
Formenkanon. Das lateinische Alphabet mit seinen 26 Symbolen sieht seit über 2000 Jahren ungefähr gleich aus. In ihrer
inneren Struktur, ihrem Skelett, blieb unsere Schrift bis heute unangetastet. Schriftentwerfer – heute Fontdesigner genannt – formen also quasi nur das Fleisch am Knochen des Schriftskeletts. Jede Schrift ist Zeuge ihrer Entstehungszeit.
Gemäss Peter Behrens ist «die Schrift eines der sprechendsten Ausdrucksmittel jeder Stilepoche» und «gibt – nächst der
Architektur – das am meisten charakteristische Bild für die geistige Entwicklung eines Volkes». Die Nähe von Schrift- und
Architekturstil ist jedoch spätestens seit dem 20. Jahrhundert nicht mehr gegeben. Die Kriterien für die Wahl des geeigneten Fonts für eine Gebäudebeschriftung – sofern nicht eine Firmenschrift, ein Signet gegeben sind – haben sich in
Bezug auf historische, bestehende und neue Bauten verschoben. Woraus die Wahl oder den Entwurf der Schrift also
ableiten? Auch hier sind kontextuelle Handlungsweisen angemessen: Je nach Gebäude, Situation und gestellter Aufgabe
ist eine die architektonische Intention kontrastierende, unterstützende oder unterstreichende Schriftwahl sinnvoll.
dot matrix
Syntax
Mistral
SoLANo
AN-, EIN-, UNTER-, ÜBERORDNEN:
BEZIEHUNGSGESCHICHTEN
Von der Inschrift zur Bezeichnung Bis Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts waren den Schriften präzis definierte Orte an
den – oft reich geschmückten – Fassaden zugewiesen. Selbst bei der Pariser Bibliothek Ste-Geneviève (1843-50) von
Henri Labrouste, wo die Schrift dem figürlichen Bauschmuck vorgezogen wurde, ordnete sich diese der architektonischen Gliederung unter. Zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts änderten sich die Erscheinungsformen der Fassaden, und die
für Schriften vorgesehenen Orte begannen zu verschwinden. Architekten der Neuen Moderne leiteten die formale Ausprägung ihrer Bauten aus deren «Zweckdienlichkeit» ab. Die Suche galt der «reinen» Form, und die Fassadengliederung
mittels dekorativer Elemente verlor zunehmend an Legitimation. Da Worte «effizienter» kommunizierten als figurative
Elemente, blieben Beschriftungen – zur damaligen «Gebrauchswertarchitektur» passend – als funktionale Elemente von
dieser Purifizierung ausgeschlossen.
(W)orte Die Anordnung und Grösse der Schrift wurden in der Folge zur kompositorischen Frage und führten zu einem
wirkungsgleichen Nebeneinander von Architektur und Schrift. Nach den gemeisselten Inschriften und den gemalten
Aufschriften lösten sich die Schriften sukzessive von der Architektur, wurden dieser vorangehängt oder beigestellt. An
einigen bekannten, zwischen 1910 und 1930 entstandenen Architekturbeispielen lässt sich diese Entwicklung exemplarisch aufzeigen: die AEG-Turbinenfabrik (1909) von Peter Behrens, das Haus am Michaelerplatz (1911) von Adolf Loos,
die Fagus-Werke (1914) von Walter Gropius und Adolf Meyer, das Café De Unie (1925) von J.P. Oud, das Bauhaus (1925)
von Gropius, das Kaufhaus Schocken in Stuttgart (1926-1928) von Erich Mendelsohn. Bei diesen Beschriftungen handelte es sich um Benennungen des Gebäudes bzw. seines Inhalts. Der Werbedruck auf die Metropolen nahm jedoch in den
1930er Jahren in einem solchen Masse zu, dass immer öfter ganze Fassaden zu – teilweise völlig kontextlosen – Werbeflächen «degradiert» wurden. Bei der Stadtküche Kraft in Berlin bauten die Gebrüder Luckhardt die Fassade so um, dass
sie danach maximale Werbewirksamkeit garantierte. Sie entwickelten einen neuen Fassadentypus, und die Kritik aus
Architekturkreisen, das Äussere würde so immer mehr zur leeren Geste des Gebäudes, liess nicht lange auf sich warten.
Beim Projekt für das Haus am Potsdamerplatz der Gebrüder Luckhardt bezog sich die Beschriftung auf das vorgefundene statisch-konstruktive Gliederungssystem und ordnete sich diesem unter. Dass sich dieses Einfügen der zweidimensionalen Typografie in ein bestehendes dreidimensionales Raster auch bei älteren, bestehenden Bauwerken anbot, zeigte
ein Entwurf von Max Bill für die Beschriftung des Kinos Corso in Zürich (1934). Die Buchstaben C, O, R, S, O sollten in die
fünf Fensteröffnungen eingepasst werden. In seiner Dimension nahm der Entwurf zudem die Tendenz zum Monumentalen vorweg. Bill schrieb 1933 in seinem Artikel «über gebäudebeschriftung» in der Schweizer Reklame: «eine beschriftung soll
unabhängig von art und formgebung des gebäudes durchgeführt werden. (...) die falsche furcht vor der architektur verhindert gewöhnlich lebendige, einzig
richtige (!) lösungen.»
Diese Haltung repräsentiert – im Gegensatz zum Corso-Entwurf – Bills Pestalozzi-Gebäude.
Learning from Las Vegas? In der Nachkriegszeit setzten sich die Beschriftungen immer mehr über die Architektur
als Ordnungssystem hinweg, wie die inzwischen abgebrochene COOP-Lagerhalle an der Pfingstweidstrasse in Zürich
aufzeigt. R. Venturi, D. Scott Brown, S. Izenour interpretierten die Dominanz der Billboards und der Reklameaufbauten
als Folge des Verlusts des symbolischen Ausdrucks der Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Immer grössere, schrillere
Zeichen überwucherten ab den 1970er Jahren die Gebäude. Das Projekt für den Basco Showroom (1979) in Bristol,
Pennsylvania, ist Symbol für den «dekorierten Schuppen», für eine gesichtslose Architektur, die von der Beschriftung
vollständig verschluckt wurde. Seit den 1980er Jahren werden Beschriftungen – vor allem in Europa – wieder verstärkt
und mit unterschiedlichen Methoden in die Architektur integriert. Das Einätzen oder Siebdrucken von Schriften auf die
Fassadengläser stellt eine erneute Verschmelzung mit der Architektur dar. Grossmassstäbliche, dynamische und schreierische Out-of-Home-Displays, wie das temporäre Projekt «Spots» der Gebrüder Edler, stellen jedoch jüngster Zeit die
neu gewonnene Einheit von Architektur und Schrift/Bild wieder in Frage. Die experimentelle (Medien)Kunst am Bau wird
hier einmal mehr der kommerziellen Anwendung vorausgeschickt und ebnet dieser den Weg, ihre Wirkung in Zukunft auf
E-Ads (Electronic Advertisement) auszudehnen. Unabhängig von diesem in der Gesamtheit aller Beschriftungen zwar
aufsehenerregenden, aber eher marginalen Phänomen entwickeln Gestalter und Gestalterinnen zurzeit interessante
Projekte, vor allem im Bereich des Ornamentalen und Skulpturalen. Sie greifen dabei auf das gesamte Repertoire historischer Beispiele zurück und entwickeln daraus spannungsvolle, zeitgenössische Lösungen.
Einführung 2
Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève,
Paris, 1843-1850
Walter Gropius/Adolf Meyer, Fagus-Werke, Alfeld, 1914
Leon Battista Alberti (Fassade), Santa Maria Novella, Florenz, 1470
Walter Gropius/Herbert Bayer (Schrift), Bauhaus, Dessau, 1925
Adolf Loos, Haus am Michaelerplatz, Wien, 1911
Foto unten: Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin
Foto: Georges Jansoone
Peter Behrens, AEG-Turbinenfabrik, Berlin-Moabit, 1909
Francesco Borromini, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rom,
1638-1677 Bilder aus: Borromini, Architekt im barocken Rom, Electa, 2000
Titusbogen, Rom, 70 n.Chr.
Foto: Alexander Z.
Widmungsinschrift:
SENATUS
POPULUSQUE ROMANUS
DIVO TITO DIVI VESPASIANI F(ILIO)
VESPASIANO AUGUSTO
Der Senat und das römische Volk (haben diesen Bogen errichtet) dem vergöttlichten Titus Vespasianus Augustus
dem Sohn des vergöttlichten Vespasian.
O.R. Salvisberg, Geschäftshaus Dierig, Berlin, 1928
Bilder aus: O.R. Salvisberg, Die andere Moderne, gta Verlag, 1995
Arne Jacobsen, Landsmarkbanken, Kopenhagen, 1935/36
Hans und Wassili Luckhardt, Chrysler Building, Berlin, 1927
Bild aus: Arne Jacobsen, Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1989
Foto: Baukunstarchiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin
AN-, EIN-, UNTER-, ÜBERORDNEN:
Erich Mendelsohn, Kaufhaus Schocken, Stuttgart, 1926-28
Bilder: Baukunstarchiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin
J.J.P. Oud, Café de Unie, Rotterdam, 1925
Bild oben aus: De Stijl, 1917-1931, Bededikt Taschen Verlag, 1990
Entwurf für die Farbgestaltung der Fassade von 1924. Oud
variierte die im Entwurf angelegte Komposition später im Detail.
Die linearen roten Partien im unteren Teil liess er weg, stattdessen erscheinen die Fenster dort blau und gelb gerahmt.
BEZIEHUNGSGESCHICHTEN
Von der Inschrift zur Bezeichnung Bis Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts waren den Schriften präzis definierte Orte an
den – oft reich geschmückten – Fassaden zugewiesen. Selbst bei der Pariser Bibliothek Ste-Geneviève (1843-50) von
Henri Labrouste, wo die Schrift dem figürlichen Bauschmuck vorgezogen wurde, ordnete sich diese der architektoni-
Hans und Wassili Luckhardt, Stadtküche Kraft, Berlin, 1925
schen Gliederung unter. Zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts änderten sich die Erscheinungsformen der Fassaden, und die
für Schriften vorgesehenen Orte begannen zu verschwinden. Architekten der Neuen Moderne leiteten die formale Ausprägung ihrer Bauten aus deren «Zweckdienlichkeit» ab. Die Suche galt der «reinen» Form, und die Fassadengliederung
Hans und Wassili Luckhardt, Haus am Potsdamerplatz (Entwurf), Berlin, 1930
mittels dekorativer Elemente verlor zunehmend an Legitimation. Da Worte «effizienter» kommunizierten als figurative
Elemente, blieben Beschriftungen – zur damaligen «Gebrauchswertarchitektur» passend – als funktionale Elemente von
dieser Purifizierung ausgeschlossen.
(W)orte Die Anordnung und Grösse der Schrift wurden in der Folge zur kompositorischen Frage und führten zu einem
wirkungsgleichen Nebeneinander von Architektur und Schrift. Nach den gemeisselten Inschriften und den gemalten
Aufschriften lösten sich die Schriften sukzessive von der Architektur, wurden dieser vorangehängt oder beigestellt. An
einigen bekannten, zwischen 1910 und 1930 entstandenen Architekturbeispielen lässt sich diese Entwicklung exemplarisch aufzeigen: die AEG-Turbinenfabrik (1909) von Peter Behrens, das Haus am Michaelerplatz (1911) von Adolf Loos,
die Fagus-Werke (1914) von Walter Gropius und Adolf Meyer, das Café De Unie (1925) von J.P. Oud, das Bauhaus (1925)
von Gropius, das Kaufhaus Schocken in Stuttgart (1926-1928) von Erich Mendelsohn. Bei diesen Beschriftungen handelte es sich um Benennungen des Gebäudes bzw. seines Inhalts. Der Werbedruck auf die Metropolen nahm jedoch in den
Venturi, Scott Brown and Ass.,
in Zusammenarbeit mit McDonalds
1930er Jahren in einem solchen Masse zu, dass immer öfter ganze Fassaden zu – teilweise völlig kontextlosen – Werbeflächen «degradiert» wurden. Bei der Stadtküche Kraft in Berlin bauten die Gebrüder Luckhardt die Fassade so um, dass
sie danach maximale Werbewirksamkeit garantierte. Sie entwickelten einen neuen Fassadentypus, und die Kritik aus
Avia-Tankstelle, D-Wattenheim, 1957 Bild aus: Sehnsüchte, Lichtreklamen
in den 50er Jahren, Fotografien aus dem Studio Bergerhausen, pro Message, 2001
Architekturkreisen, das Äussere würde so immer mehr zur leeren Geste des Gebäudes, liess nicht lange auf sich warten.
Beim Projekt für das Haus am Potsdamerplatz der Gebrüder Luckhardt bezog sich die Beschriftung auf das vorgefundene statisch-konstruktive Gliederungssystem und ordnete sich diesem unter. Dass sich dieses Einfügen der zweidimensionalen Typografie in ein bestehendes dreidimensionales Raster auch bei älteren, bestehenden Bauwerken anbot, zeigte
ein Entwurf von Max Bill für die Beschriftung des Kinos Corso in Zürich (1934). Die Buchstaben C, O, R, S, O sollten in die
Jelmoli-Neubau, Zürich, 1961
Foto: Wolf-Bender, BAZ
fünf Fensteröffnungen eingepasst werden. In seiner Dimension nahm der Entwurf zudem die Tendenz zum Monumentalen vorweg. Bill schrieb 1933 in seinem Artikel «über gebäudebeschriftung» in der Schweizer Reklame: «eine beschriftung soll
unabhängig von art und formgebung des gebäudes durchgeführt werden. (...) die falsche furcht vor der architektur verhindert gewöhnlich lebendige, einzig
Max Bill, Corso-Beschriftung (Entwurf), Zürich, 1935
Bild aus: Max Bill: Typografie, Reklame, Buchgestaltung, Niggli Verlag, 1999
Roman Clemens, Studio 4, 1949, Zürich
richtige (!) lösungen.»
Fotos: Wolf-Bender, BAZ
Diese Haltung repräsentiert – im Gegensatz zum Corso-Entwurf – Bills Pestalozzi-Gebäude.
M. Haefeli, W. Moser, R. Steiger; Gérard Miedinger (Leuchtreklame), Geschäftshaus Bally, Zürich, 1967 Foto: Wolf-Bender, BAZ
Learning from Las Vegas? In der Nachkriegszeit setzten sich die Beschriftungen immer mehr über die Architektur
als Ordnungssystem hinweg, wie die inzwischen abgebrochene COOP-Lagerhalle an der Pfingstweidstrasse in Zürich
aufzeigt. R. Venturi, D. Scott Brown, S. Izenour interpretierten die Dominanz der Billboards und der Reklameaufbauten
als Folge des Verlusts des symbolischen Ausdrucks der Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Immer grössere, schrillere
Zeichen überwucherten ab den 1970er Jahren die Gebäude. Das Projekt für den Basco Showroom (1979) in Bristol,
Pennsylvania, ist Symbol für den «dekorierten Schuppen», für eine gesichtslose Architektur, die von der Beschriftung
vollständig verschluckt wurde. Seit den 1980er Jahren werden Beschriftungen – vor allem in Europa – wieder verstärkt
und mit unterschiedlichen Methoden in die Architektur integriert. Das Einätzen oder Siebdrucken von Schriften auf die
Fassadengläser stellt eine erneute Verschmelzung mit der Architektur dar. Grossmassstäbliche, dynamische und schreierische Out-of-Home-Displays, wie das temporäre Projekt «Spots» der Gebrüder Edler, stellen jedoch jüngster Zeit die
neu gewonnene Einheit von Architektur und Schrift/Bild wieder in Frage. Die experimentelle (Medien)Kunst am Bau wird
hier einmal mehr der kommerziellen Anwendung vorausgeschickt und ebnet dieser den Weg, ihre Wirkung in Zukunft auf
E-Ads (Electronic Advertisement) auszudehnen. Unabhängig von diesem in der Gesamtheit aller Beschriftungen zwar
aufsehenerregenden, aber eher marginalen Phänomen entwickeln Gestalter und Gestalterinnen zurzeit interessante
Projekte, vor allem im Bereich des Ornamentalen und Skulpturalen. Sie greifen dabei auf das gesamte Repertoire historischer Beispiele zurück und entwickeln daraus spannungsvolle, zeitgenössische Lösungen.
Picadilly-Circus, London
Upper Strip, Las Vegas, um 1968
Bild aus: Las Vegas Studio, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2008
Tokyo, 1980er Jahre
Times Square, New York, 1980er Jahre
Fremont Street, Las Vegas, um 1985
Bild aus: Magic Signs, ST Publications, 1993, Cincinatti
realities:united, Kunsthaus Graz, 2003
Bild: www.realitiesunited.de
realities:united, AAmp, Singapur, 2009 Bild: www.realitiesunited.de
AAmp steht für «architectural advertising amplifier» und ist eine
künstlerische Medienfassade der Gebrüder Edler. Die Installation
bildet den Rahmen für eine kommerzielle LED-Anzeige und dient
dazu, deren Wirkung zu vergrössern.
VSBA Architects Inc., Basco Showroom, Bristol, Pennsylvania, 1978/79
Bild oben aus: Las Vegas Studio, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2008
Frank O. Gehry/Gruen Ass., Santa Monica Place, 1980
Transform Gmbh, Coop-Lagerhaus, Zürich (abgebrochen 2009)
Bild oben aus: archithese 1/1995, Zürich
Gigon Guyer, Kirchner Museum,
Davos, 1992
Foto: Amt für Städtebau, Zürich
Herzog & de Meuron, SUVA, Umbau und Erweiterung eins Wohn- und Bürohauses,
Basel, 1988-93 aus: Herzog & de Meuron 1989-1991, Birkhäuser Verlag, 1996
Detail, Siebdruck auf Glas
realities:united, Spots (temporäre Installation), Potsdamerplatz, Berlin, 2005/6
Bild: www.realitiesunited.de
Vertiefungscluster 1
MEISSELN, RITZEN, EINFÜGEN, AUFMALEN:
VON DER IN- ZUR AUFSCHRIFT
Kerben – Ritzen – Meisseln; Einfügen – Inlays; Bemalungen, wo? Siebdruck – Folie
AUFSETZEN, AB- UND ANHÄNGEN, ABDECKEN:
BUCHSTABEN UND SCHILDER
Buchstaben aus Metall und anderen Stoffen; Bild- und Wortschilder; Von der Schilderkunst zum Schilderwald
TYPOTEKTUREN:
SCHRIFT ALS SKULPTUR
Räumliche Typografie – Architektonisches Alphabet; Lineare Dimensionalität; Räumliche Dreidimensionalität
LICHTARCHITEKTUR, LEUCHTSCHRIFTEN, PROJEKTIONEN:
LICHT LOCKT LEUTE
Die Nacht wird zum Tag; Zum Träger degradiert; Projizieren
BEWEGTE BILDER & TEXTE IM ÖFFENTLICHEN RAUM:
OUT-OF-HOME-DISPLAYS
Ortsgebunden – auswechselbar; Analog und digital; Animieren – Interagieren; Kunst und Kommerz
SCHRIFT ALS BILD/ORNAMENT:
FUNCTIONAL DECORATION
Lesbarkeit; Auflösen – überlagern«; Dekoration – Kommunikation; Ornamental angewandte Logos
MARKEN UND ARCHITEKTUR:
CORPORATE ARCHITECTURE
Architektonische Markeninszenierung; Räpräsentations- und Systemarchitektur; Corporate Architecture
FUNKTIONAL, INTEGRAL, NARRATIV:
WEGLEITUNG UND ORIENTIERUNG
Wegnetze – Strassenmuster; Orientierung durch Design; Signaletik?; Informieren – integrieren – inszenieren
TEMPORÄRE BAUTEN/BOTSCHAFTEN/NUTZUNGEN:
MO(NU)MENTE
Ephemere Architekturen; Verdecken; Besetzen; Wechselnde Botschaften
REFLEXION, POESIE, IRONIE:
SCHRIFTEN IM KUNSTKONTEXT
Freiräume, absichtslos; Worte, überall; Virtuelle Räume
SCHRIFT UND WERBUNG IM ÖFFENTLICHEN RAUM:
REGULIERUNGSMASSNAHMEN
Der öffentliche Raum als Werbefläche; Auffallen um jeden Preis; Regulieren?; Debranding
HIGH AND LOW:
KURIOSITÄTEN
Legal; Illegal; Schönster Dilletantismus; Mittelmass
Podiumsdiskussion | 10. September 2009
Ceci tuera cela – jamais!
Wenn Bauten und Beschriftungen in Konkurrenz geraten
Es diskutierten unter der Leitung von Meret Ernst, Redaktorin Hochparterre:
– Kristin Irion, Visuelle Gestalterin, Bringolf Irion Vögeli GmbH, Zürich
– Bernard Liechti, Leiter Fachbereich Reklamebewilligungen, Amt für Städtebau der Stadt Zürich
– Fabian Sander, Markenexperte, Scholtysik Niederberger Kraft, Zürich
– Michael Widrig, Architekt, Kaufmann Widrig Architekten GmbH, Zürich
Kuratoren
Agnès Laube, 1964
Grafikerin / Dozentin
Michael Widrig, 1966
dipl. Architekt ETH
1981 – 1984 Kaufm. Berufslehre in Baden (Anwaltskanzlei)
1988 – 1992
Architekturstudium an der ETH Zürich
1985 – 1989 Ausbildung an der Schule für Gestaltung in Zürich (heutige ZhdK)
1994 – 1998 Mitarbeit bei Gigon/Guyer Architekten, Zürich
1989 Abschluss der Grafikfachklasse
1998 Eigenes Architekturbüro
1989– 1991 Anstellung bei Pierre Miedinger, Zürich
1998 – 1999
ETH Zürich, Assistent bei Doz. Ch. Luchsinger
seit 1991 eigenes Atelier in Zürich
1999 – 2002 Amt für Städtebau Zürich, Bereich Stadtplanung
seit 1998
Projekte im Bereich Grafik und Architektur
2002 EPF Lausanne, Assistent bei Doz. Gigon/Guyer
seit 2002
Expertinnen- und Dozententätigkeit an verschiedenen 2002 – 2007 ETH Zürich, Assistent bei Prof. A. Rüegg
Fachhochschulen der Schweiz
seit 2003 Gemeinsames Büro mit Daniel Kaufmann
Binzstrasse 9
CH 8045 Zürich
T +41 (0)44 451 41 08
[email protected]
www.agneslaube.ch
Schöneggstrasse 5
CH 8004 Zürich
T +41 (0)44 461 38 30
[email protected]
www.kwarch.ch
Metahaven, Brand States: Postmodern Power, Democratic Pluralism, and Design / Journal / e-flux
03.12.09 15:05
41 Essex street
New York, NY 10002, USA
Metahaven
Brand States: Postmodern Power, Democratic
Pluralism, and Design
In the New Europe
A rainy autumn day in Tallinn at 10 am. Between twenty and thirty experts
convene in a tiny classroom. Their meeting is about the national brand of
Estonia. A former Soviet Republic, independent since 1991 and now a
member of the European Union and NATO, Estonia sits between
Scandinavia and Russia, and it is only partially happy to be doing so. Almost
everyone in the room thinks that Estonia doesn't say the right things about
itself to the world. No one likes Estonia's current national brand and its
trademark, "Welcome to Estonia." Allegedly, an Irish proxy for the
Interbrand corporation "created" it and ran away with an excessive amount
of money. An official in charge moans that Estonian citizens should be
programmed to say better things about their country when interviewed by
foreign travelers (Estonian humor tends to be self-deprecating). Someone
suggests that Estonia may not be a place where many things started, but it
is the place where a lot of things came to—an end. Everyone laughs.
Estonian promotion mainly leads to Tallinn, the capital. But what about the
country's unspoiled countryside? Estonia has inherited heavy industry and
massive shipyards, but what about its emerging IT sector? The current
president considers Estonia a Nordic country along with Finland and
Sweden, but the country doesn't boast anything close to a social-democratic
Scandinavian welfare state. For geographers, Estonia is part of a belt of
former Soviet states stretching all the way to Murmansk, many of which are
little known to international audiences. For the British, Tallinn is a target
destination for stag parties, thanks to EasyJet's direct flights from London
Stansted; no-holds-barred drinking and misbehaving on the safe ground of
foreign soil. For the Russians, Estonia is contested ground. With a renewed
faith in the politics of Russian empire, many Russians living in Estonia
refuse to speak or learn Estonian, clanning together while dreaming of an
Anschluss. Estonia is the birthplace of the composer Arvo Pärt. Andrej
Tarkovsky's seminal movie Stalker was shot in a derelict Tallinn warehouse.
And the massively popular Internet phone and text messaging application
Skype is from Estonia.
The discussion began with a logo, "Welcome to Estonia," which nobody
found attractive or inspiring. Soon however it was no longer about that but
about the way Estonian citizens should behave on the streets. The person in
http://e-flux.com/journal/view/29
Estonian presentation at a tourist fair in
Helsinki in 2004. The backdrop has the
current national brand, "Welcome to
Estonia."
Metahaven, Eurololly , poster, 2008
This poster puts the French EU presidency slogan
L’Europe Qui Protège into question by means of
an alternative: L’Europe Qui Protège de Quoi?
Courtesy the artists and CAPC musée d’art
contemporain de Bordeaux.
Seite 1 von 14
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charge of the logo made no secret of her ambition to change that behavior
if she could.
Consequently, our meeting was open to the public. That alone, however,
didn't make it democratic. We had all been invited because of our proximity
to the issue of nation branding and not because of our capacity to represent
the Estonian people. We were part of a network of experts.
Metahaven, Structural Hole, poster, 2008
Visual research into the structural properties of
networks and the political role of weak ties and
peripheries.
Courtesy the artists and CAPC musée d’art
contemporain de Bordeaux.
Romano Prodi and Francesco Rutelli
presenting Italy’s new national brand, ‘It’,
on 21 February 2007. See also Social
Design Zine.
Belgian-Dutch government press
conference in Brussels about ill-fated
banking firm Fortis taking place under
Belgian’s ‘.be’ national brand and domain
suffix, 28 September 2008. Photo: REUTERS
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Estonian presentation at a tourist fair in Helsinki in 2004. The backdrop has the current national brand, "Welcome to Estonia."
In recent years, branding has come to be considered as appertaining to a much wider arena than one of
commercial trademark alone. This has made it both easier and more difficult to discredit branding. While it is
easier to condemn it for its hegemonic role across the spectrum, it becomes harder to pinpoint exactly what that
hegemony implies. Beyond the commercial logo, the "place brand"—signifying a nation, region, or city—is a
trademark for a place. Branding, in this situation, is both less autonomous and more elusive in its role and
position.
A place brand is essentially little more than a first impression. It is the first two, three thoughts people have when
they think about a place. To change these assumptions in a more "favorable" direction may require a stylish (or
terrible) logo, but it may also consist of more fundamental policy shifts which affect the lives of people: "defining
the most realistic, most competitive and most compelling strategic vision for a country, region or city; this vision
then has to be fulfilled and communicated," as the place-branding expert Simon Anholt describes it. 1 What makes
place branding slippery in terms of its politics is that it increasingly stands as both a visual practice and a modality
of governance.
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Metahaven, Eurololly, poster, 2008
This poster puts the French EU presidency slogan L’Europe Qui Protège into question by means of an alternative: L’Europe Qui Protège de Quoi?
Courtesy the artists and CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.
In this article we will examine two political concepts that currently inform place branding, focusing on nation
states. "Soft power," the first of these two, is already widely identified with branding. "Network power," the
second, is not yet fully considered as such. We will argue that in its current stage, state branding has not yet
seen critical, alternative, or counter-hegemonic approaches. We will conclude that the recognition of network
power as a form of structural coercion provides the best starting position for the development of such alternative
approaches to state branding.
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Soft Power and State Branding
It is a widely accepted idea that place branding draws on attraction and legitimacy in a transnational network of
relations. What is employed is a genuine form of power called "soft power"—the ability to obtain the outcomes
you want by attracting others. Joseph Nye, who coined the term, says that, "power today is less tangible and less
coercive among the advanced democracies than it was in the past. At the same time, much of the world does not
consist of advanced democracies, and that limits the global transformation of power."2
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Metahaven, Structural Hole, poster, 2008
Visual research into the structural properties of networks and the political role of weak ties and peripheries.
Courtesy the artists and CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.
Not surprisingly, soft power blossomed after the end of the Cold War. It specifically worked for the United States
during the Clinton administration, across the spectrum of political ideas, cultural products and commercial brands,
as well as in the field of diplomacy. For example, someone like Richard Holbrooke was able to put international
conflicts to an end in volatile and playful ways, replacing Henry Kissinger's Cold War-style "chess" with what
Holbrooke called "jazz." In subsuming cultural factors, soft power is understood to have included the Hollywood
film industry as well as commercial brands like Coca-Cola and Nike in its overall objective of gaining influence and
legitimacy.
Soft power's single most important asset is its allegedly non-coercive nature, the capacity to reach desirable
outcomes without involving force, threat, or payment. Political theorists such as Chantal Mouffe would have
problems with such a claim, on the grounds that there can be no political order that does not exclude
alternatives, and indeed soft power is strongly premised on the American possession of military and economic
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hegemony and thus on a form of structural coercion. Of course, the idea of structural coercion is more recognized
in the theory of network power, which we will explore at a later stage.3
Peter van Ham asserts that "like commercial brands, we talk about a state's 'personality,' describing it as 'friendly'
(i.e., Western-oriented) and 'credible' (ally), or, in contrast, as 'unreliable' ('rogue state')." 4 Van Ham's idea of a
successful and attractive corporate brand personality consists in an explicit attraction to the West (the U.S. and
its European allies). He classifies soft power and state branding under the wider umbrella of postmodern power,
which "exercises power (generally considered to be the ability to alter the behavior of others to get what you
want) without using coercion and/or payments."5 Van Ham's 2001 essay "The Rise of the Brand State," published
in Foreign Affairs , opened up the field of political science to the topic of state branding (subsequently, Van Ham
became involved in a project to create a national brand for The Netherlands). At the same time, his article having
been written prior to the September 11 attacks—prior also to what is perceived as a global decline in American
hegemony giving way to the end of the post-Cold War unipolar model—some of the most elementary
assumptions may need to be reexamined in light of an emerging geopolitical situation.
Romano Prodi and Francesco Rutelli presenting Italy’s new national brand, ‘It’, on 21 February 2007. See also Social Design Zine.
Seite 7 von 14
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Belgian-Dutch government press conference in Brussels about ill-fated banking firm Fortis taking place under Belgian’s ‘.be’ national brand and domain suffix, 28
September 2008. Photo: REUTERS
Van Ham's extensive article on the topic, entitled "Place Branding: The State of the Art," examines three case
studies: the European Union, the United States, and Kazakhstan. Van Ham's most substantial departure from his
initial ideas concerns the EU, which he now suggests should promote itself more assertively as a security brand
capable of wielding military power. 6 Secondly, he states that the U.S. needs to rebuild its soft power resources.
"For the United States, it has proven difficult to brand itself as a force for good and democracy, with stories about
torture and human rights abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo hitting the headlines of newspapers all over the
world."7 Here we are reminded of Joseph Nye's own reapplication of the soft power concept during the Bush
administration.
Van Ham's third example is Kazakhstan. Being unknown and unbranded makes a state vulnerable to negative
branding and image hijacks by third parties. This happened to Kazakhstan with the release of the film Borat:
Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan .8 Borat , played by comedian Sacha
Baron Cohen, makes use of the fact that global audiences are unaware of what the former Soviet republic of
Kazakhstan looks like. The film reshapes Kazakhstan's image into that of a grotesque backwater inhabited by
village idiots, interpersed with Soviet-era footage of agriculture and heavy industries. Van Ham's analysis
concentrates on the controversies following its release. The Kazakh government felt obliged to hire public
relations firms, running advertisements in major international newspapers and on television, to tell the world
what it "really" was—a fiction of an entirely different kind, of course. Van Ham concludes that "Cohen could have
easily made a fool of other unknown countries (like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), pointing up the fact for all
unbranded countries the risk of not being in charge of their image and reputation and the inability for a country
to be in full control of one's own brand." 9
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Negative Brand Value and Peripheries
As much as Borat was fictitious, everything about it produced real effects. Sacha Baron Cohen recorded the
greater part of the Kazakhstan scenes in a remote Romanian village. 10 It is sometimes claimed that Borat
confronts Western audiences with their own deeply held prejudices about foreign places and peoples. But much
of Borat is itself representative of this attitude. The new nations that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet
Union continue to inspire mockery on the part of the West, interrupted occasionally by declarations of intent to
help these nations move forward.
In 1999 the British branding expert Wally Olins wrote in a book chapter called "Putting the unknown nation on
the map": "How many people—apart from real specialists—can tell the five former Soviet Central Asian 'stans'
apart? In reality, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzystan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan are very different. Some
large, some small, some have huge resources, others don't, some are old-style communist dictatorships, others
are evolving in a more or less democratic direction and, of course, they all dislike each other. But they've got a
real problem in establishing who and what they are in a world increasingly cluttered with 'new' nations."11
At present, the negative brand value of many of these entities, some of which have split up into breakaway
regions, is expressed by terms like quasi states, pseudo-states, and hollow states. The geographers Vladimir
Kolossov and John O'Loughlin identify pseudo-states by their partial governance, possessing transitional or
incomplete statehood.12 Francis Fukuyama speaks about "weak states," in whose poorly governed regions
terrorism and anti-Western practices flourish. 13 But for Wally Olins, the issue is invariably a simple one: emerging
nations all have problems with their brand, as no one really knows or cares what they are. In 2006, when Olins
was asked which would be his favorite nation to brand, the same ambiguity that had previously befallen the
former Soviet "stans" now applied to new EU countries. Olins replied that he would like to brand "almost any
Central European country. Who the hell knows the difference between Slovenia and Slovakia?" 14
When we asked Simon Anholt to respond to this quote, he wrote that, "Olins was trying to emphasize the
indifference that most people feel about most countries, especially smaller and not very famous ones. I don't
think he was expressing his own views." Anholt continued, "he was parodying public opinion."15 However, it is
this alleged "indifference" of public opinion, combined with offhand jokes about countries' names and their
marginality, that keeps the engine of revenue running for some of the world's branding agencies. Branding
experts and marketing gurus may have a vested interest in telling peripheral and unbranded countries how
hopelessly obsolete they appear without a state brand of their own, but the threat to an unbranded state is a
serious decline in visibility, legitimacy and social capital. However positive and friendly the idea of state branding
may sound, it seems that there is a structurally coercive force in the background, leaving the unbranded nation
no choice but to "join the brandwagon," as Van Ham calls it.
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Network Power and State Branding
States which have acquired a large amount of social capital in the form of positive ties within networks of other
states, non-governmental organizations, corporations, and other actors are more likely to be seen as legitimate
and authoritative than those operating on their own, without many friends. In order to fully grasp the
consequences of such a condition, we need to understand state branding in the context of globalization and look
beyond soft power. We need to approach state branding, as it were, not from the position of the former
sovereign ruler but from the vantage point of the networks that decide the standards of sociability. In the process
of globalization, networks become social structures that tie parts of the world together, independent of sovereign
borders and even independent of "international relations." While indeed, sovereign coercion may have become a
thing of the past in this new situation, there may be structural coercion involved through the standards which
networks adopt. According to David Grewal, "network power" is a dynamic that centers around certain standards
(conventions accepted and used by many), and potentially leading to "the progressive elimination of alternatives
over which otherwise free choice can effectively be exercised."16 While networks cross sovereign power divisions,
the paradox is that network power is granted by a popular vote, expressed by the "voluntary" subscription to a
network standard. This vote however acts like the value of capital under an interest rate. Many subscriptions
generate more capital. They gradually, but steadily, suppress the viability of alternatives, as these progressively
lose their benefits.
Grewal offers a compelling analysis of these power structures. While Van Ham mentions thinkers like Michel
Foucault and Antonio Gramsci as part of a constructivist view of power, 17 Grewal asserts that both theorists share
a view of power that is heterodox: it is not exerted top-down but instead works "through the structure of social
relations." These theories can, however, "have trouble locating or articulating the role of agency in social
structuration."18 For what concerns Grewal is the real freedom of choice made under network power. He argues
that, under network power, formally free choices ultimately become forced choices made without authoritative
command being needed:
Two features are relevant for the consideration of choice in situations of network power. First, the consequences
of an individual's choice are determined in coordination with the expectations of others who face similar,
interdependent choices. Second, since network power grows through the operation of choice, as individuals must
choose to join networks, it must always involve consent of a formal kind, at least. I ignore here cases in which
networks move to ascendancy through the forced conversion of outsiders because the more interesting case is
not when direct force brings about conformity to a dominant standard, but when the structural condition of
formally free, interdependent choice drive communities to that point.... The concept of network power reveals
complexities in the connection between the idea of consent and the idea of freedom. Beyond what I earlier called
the threshold of inevitability, a standard is pushed toward universality, and its network becomes poised to merge
with the population itself. It is "pushed" by the activity of people evaluating consequences and, ultimately,
choosing to adopt a dominant standard because of the access it allows them to forms of cooperation with
others.19
Soft power, according to Joseph Nye, is "the ability to get the outcomes you want without having to force people
to change their behavior through threats or payments."20 What complicates this premise is that a "payment"
could be made in the currency of social capital rather than in money, while a "threat"could be made by
controlling or restricting access to social capital rather than through an economic sanction. If for Nye a payment
belongs to the category of hard power because it is based not on attraction and free subscription but on the
Seite 10 von 14
03.12.09 15:05
issuance of cash to achieve an outcome, forms of reward and punishment implicit in networks are still left
unconsidered; that is, on occasions or in situations where subscription to a standard was necessary rather than
voluntary.
Pluralism and Standards in State Branding
Most state brands are designed under the power of consent, the impact of which we have attempted to illustrate
here with brief explorations of soft power (which is already linked with place branding) and network power (which
comes relatively new to it).
State brands signify a communications standard of sorts—they are about the diplomatic and aesthetic
requirements of post-sovereign and transnational networks identified with the term "globalization." These
networks involve various forms of temporary and long-term coalitions between states and non-state actors such
as NGOs and corporations, as well as flows of tourism, information, and foreign investment. On the other hand,
state brands are also still firmly rooted in the idea of promoting distinct places on the world map where "an
otherwise disorderly and disoriented world"21 is kept at bay by rendering distant (and potentially unattractive,
illegitimate, and scary) places into reliable, welcoming, and indeed, "attractive" destinations.
Overlaps between places and information networks are already present in some of these brands themselves.
States as varied as Belgium and Italy use their country's Internet domain name suffix as a national brand. While
Belgium has more fully embraced its ".be" suffix as a networking protocol, Italy's ".it" is still reminiscent of
traditional tourist brands in the vein of Joan Miró's famous 1980s trademark for Spain.22 Scotland is well on its
way with ".sco," an Internet suffix of its own. The Spanish region of Catalonia boasts an independent image with
its newly acquired suffix ".cat". Such a proliferation of sub- and supranational domain suffixes becoming place
brands may indicate increasing overlaps between the soft power of attraction and the network power of
standards.
For Van Ham, establishing a state brand is a matter of supranational competition. "Although many places offer the
same 'product'—territory, infrastructure, educated people, and an almost identical system of governance—they
must compete with each other for investment, tourism, and political power, often on a global scale."23 Van Ham
suggests that place brands need to be distinguishable precisely in order to surpass their structural similarity,
which in the global marketplace could be regarded as a kind of redundancy. In practice, this idea of competition
does not result in a great variety of approaches to state branding, but to a stalemate situation of relatively
uninspired "safe" choices. The iconography as well as the ideology of state branding has become so constrained
by marketing and so identified with promotion that, indeed, many place brands are now becoming demonstrations
of their own incapacity to assess a difference of place with a difference of approach.
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Either this diversity is, in reality, not genuinely experienced as such (indeed, some brand experts do seem to
identify more with the general public's alleged disinterest than with any intimate knowledge of distinct
geographies) or such diversity is genuinely nonexistent and perhaps obsolete (i.e. globalization and its "nonplaces," "spaces of flows," or "junkspace" are becoming more and more alike). If the latter is the case, then a
higher degree of supranational standardization of nation brands would at least do away with the quasi-choice and
inequalities currently on offer. A patented state branding standard—perhaps according to the Internet domain
suffix or to the DIN system—would at least generate a new sense of networking rationality operating parallel to,
for example, the realm of national flags.
Another option altogether would be to explore pluralism in state brands, based on new global redistributions of
political power, both sovereign and in networks. Much of the former "unipolar" global dominance that informed
soft power is now in disarray. This is not to imply that soft power is now ineffective, but only that it is
underwritten less by a single hegemony. We could also say that some of the ideas theorists such as Foucault and
Gramsci had about power being distributed through social relations are to be increasingly observed in the
geopolitical arena instead of merely in the former "private sphere" of social relations.
Richard Haass writes that "power is now found in many hands and in many places," giving way to a geopolitical
spectrum he calls "nonpolar":
There are many more power centers, and quite a few of these poles are not nation-states. Indeed, one of the
cardinal features of the contemporary international system is that nation-states have lost their monopoly on
power and in some domains their preeminence as well. States are being challenged from above, by regional and
global organizations; from below, by militias; and from the side, by a variety of nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) and corporations.24
While the unstoppable maelstrom of globalization does away with many of the former assets of sovereign power,
Haass speaks of how "difficult and dangerous" nonpolarity is.
On a different theoretical premise, Chantal Mouffe has argued for a multipolar world—a geopolitical spectrum
seemingly less obsessed with the flows of power in networks than with a distributed and "plural" sense of local,
regional, and national sovereignty. Mouffe asserts that we have to:
"…take pluralism seriously instead of trying to impose one single model on the whole world, even if it is a wellmeaning cosmopolitan one. It is therefore urgent to relinquish the illusion of a unified world and to work towards
the establishment of a multipolar world. We hear a lot today about the necessity of an effective "multilateralism."
But multilateralism in a unipolar world will always be an illusion. As long as a single hegemonic power exists, it
will always be the one that decides if it will take into consideration the opinion of other nations or act alone. A
real multilateralism requires the existence of a plurality of centres of decision and some sort of equilibrium—even
if it is only a relative one—among various powers." 25
It seems that the theoretical battle concerning which kind of polarity applies to the current situation remains
unresolved. For Haass in 2008, models of unipolarity and multipolarity already belong to the recent past, while for
Mouffe in 2005, unipolarity hasn't ended yet and multipolarity remains an emerging future prospect. Haass
recognizes the rise of regional sovereign power hubs across the continents as an important part of his nonpolar
model, but still places more emphasis on the many kinds of elusive networked agents as well as the withering
away of traditional structures of diplomacy, accountability, and coalition.
Typically, a place brand is created by think tanks, focus groups, consultancies, and other public-private
alliances. 26 Often, in order to gain public support and sympathy, additional promotional campaigns are initiated to
appease its stakeholders (the citizens). Some place brands have used open-ended opportunities for citizens to
become part of the brand message, such as in the case of the current brand for the city of Berlin. 27 Though this
provides an incentive to enhance social capital for citizens, it is not necessarily democratic: while offering an
opportunity, the brand creates new inequalities (just as acquiring an "employee of the week" status at
McDonald's is not the same as unionizing to get a pay raise). Once again, the dynamics at play look more like a
networking protocol. That protocol itself is privately crafted—it is not open to public deliberation.
State branding ultimately requires a new paradigm that goes beyond soft power—one less focused on promotion
and indeed more concerned with both the structural standardization implied by network power and a pluralistic
understanding of decentralized and distributed political alternatives being developed on various scales. The
involvement of designers and other branding experts becomes necessary to take state branding out of its current
singularity of approach and into an engagement with its theoretical and political premises, as well as its
application. What was revealed by the Estonian branding session described above was that the complexity of
Estonian representation and self-image—combined with the reality of its position between Russia and the Nordic
countries—makes mere promotion of its desirable assets an impossibility. Rather than regard state brands as
promotional tools, we should perhaps see them instead as diplomatic and journalistic "accounts" of a nation's own
self-reflexive awareness with regard to the multi-faceted reality of globalization.
The latest news is that the Unites States now identifies its soft power more fully with network standards.
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy James Glassman has announced that as part of its state branding
efforts, U.S. public diplomacy now sneaks into forums and social networking platforms on the Internet to promote
the positive aspects of U.S. democracy. When asked by a journalist about the freedom to have ideas other than
those favorable to the American point of view, Glassman responded, "We're not using Facebook to launch a war.
Absolutely not. In fact, what we're using Facebook for is to invite exactly what you're talking about, which I tend
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to call the—maybe too grandiosely—the grand conversation. We want a conversation."28
☁
Images in this article are from Metahaven's project Blackmail , 2008.
copyright e-flux 2009
view all issues
contact e-flux journal
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1 Simon Anholt, “Branding Places and Nations,” in
Brands and Branding , ed. Rita Clifton and John Simmons (New
York: Bloomberg Press, 2003), 214.
2 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,
Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), 30.
3 This thesis was developed in Chantal Mouffe’s books
the Political (Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, 2005).
The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993) and On
4 Peter van Ham, “Place Branding: The State of the Art,” in
Social Science 616 (March 2008): 130. See →.
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and
5 Ibid., 132.
6 It seems like the spirit of Van Ham’s analysis has already translated into Eurobranding. Casually messianic, the
French slogan for 2008 EU presidency is l’Europe qui protège (the Europe that protects).
7 Van Ham, “Place Branding,” 141.
8 Ibid., 142.
9 Ibid., 143.
10 See “Poor Romanian villagers not amused by “Borat” movie success at their expense,”
Tribune, November 14, 2006, → (accessed November 1, 2008).
International Herald
11 Wally Olins,
Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies are Taking on Each Others' Roles (London:
Foreign Policy Centre, 1999).
12 See Vladimir Kolossov and John O’Loughlin, “Pseudo-States as Harbingers of a New Geopolitics: The Example
of the Trans-Dniester Moldovan Republic (TMR),” in Boundaries, Territory and Postmodernity , ed. David Newman
(London: Frank Cass, 1999).
13 See Francis Fukuyama,
State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2004).
14 Wally Olins, “Country code—London,”
Monocle 1 (September 2007).
15 Simon Anholt, e-mail message to author, April 2008.
16 See David Singh Grewal,
Network Power: The social dynamics of globalization (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2008), 4.
18 Grewal,
Network Power , p. 106.
19 Ibid., 107.
20 Nye,
Soft Power , 15.
22 For a survey of a Miró-style “surrealist” tradition in tourist brands, see Metahaven, “A Nation Brand Paradox,”
in HTV 72 (February 2008), →.
23 Van Ham, “Place Branding.” 129.
24 Richard N. Haass, “The Age of Nonpolarity,” in
Foreign Affairs 87 (May/June 2008), → (accessed November 1,
2008).
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25 Mouffe,
03.12.09 15:05
On the Political , 116.
26 For example the Paris-based Fondation Europe Plus. Mission: to make Europe more attractive and competitive;
see → (accessed 1 November 2008).
27 See Berlin’s city brand “Be Berlin,” → (accessed 1 November 2008).
28 See U.S. Department of State, “Briefing on U.S. Diplomacy and the War of Ideas,” October 28, 2008, →
(accessed 1 November 2008).
Metahaven is a studio for research and design based in Amsterdam and Brussels, consisting of Daniel van der
Velden, Vinca Kruk, and Gon Zifroni. By “research,” the group intends a gathering of data, inquiry, imagination,
and, ultimately, speculation, which informs their work in graphic design, branding, and iconography, as well as in
architecture. Metahaven has previously created a visual identity for the mini-state Sealand, for research projects
around the former House of People in Bucharest, and for the European Internet search engine Quaero.
Metahaven’s work is exhibited as part of the traveling exhibition “Forms of Inquiry: the Architecture of Critical
Graphic Design” at the Architectural Association, London, and in “On Purpose: Design Concepts” at Arnolfini,
Bristol, “Since we last spoke about monuments” at Stroom, The Hague, and “Affiche Frontière,” a solo exhibition
at CAPC, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux. At the 2008 Venice Architectural Biennial, Metahaven was
represented with a lecture at the Dutch pavilion. In addition to design, research, and writing, Metahaven lectures
widely, and its members teach at institutions including Yale University in New Haven, the Academy of Arts in
Arnhem, the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and the School of Visual Arts in Valence, France.
www.metahaven.net
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Metahaven, Europe Sans: History, Politics, and Protocol in the EU Image / Journal / e-flux
03.12.09 15:06
41 Essex street
New York, NY 10002, USA
Metahaven
Europe Sans: History, Politics, and Protocol in the EU
Image
“Identity, please!”
In Europe, the past has always been much better than the present. Those who see European identity diluted, its
legacy erased—public places smattered with graffiti and covered with advertising, names forgotten, classical
languages unlearned, French and German replaced by broken English—are concerned that all that was ever good
about Europe may be bound to transform beyond recognition. But their lament, however justifiable, disregards
the fact that the meaning of Europe and the values assigned to it are indissolubly bound to practices and
processes rather than ideas. The prosaic, the makeshift, and the managerial have come to prevail over supreme
beauty and ethics.
▴ Euro Shopper, launched in
the 1990's and active in 16
European countries, is, in its
own words, a “highly succesful
discount brand.”
▴ Euro Shopper, launched in the 1990's and active in 16 European countries, is, in its own words, a “highly succesful discount brand.”
There is no denying that the ubiquitous “Euro-” prefix that faithfully continues to promote Europe hardly
designates a luxury brand. The enormous economic achievements of the single European currency
notwithstanding, it would be difficult to claim that the Euro banknotes, with their drawings of fictitious historical
buildings, make a fantastic contribution to contemporary art and design. And probably not too many people
appreciate the sobering monument installed in the Luxembourg town of Remerschen to commemorate the 1985
Treaty of Schengen. These are just a few examples; in fact, quite a substantial share of European identity
breathes boredom and cheapness, and this situation is not to be attributed to any form of central control or
branding, but rather to the simultaneous deployment of market liberalism, good intentions, and managerial
protocol.
This article compares a Europe of historical ideas with a Europe of practices. It is the comparison between two
brand identities: one historical, highly visible, and very important; the other semi-new (already aging), stealthy
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(somewhat invisible), and cheap (affordable). This comparison leads to further reflection on the EU’s idea of
power (without coercion, of course), its territorial and monetary borders, and the surveillance and protocol used
to enforce them. Meanwhile, various social movements have reclaimed resistance and rioting as a means to
occupy precisely those historical symbols belonging to Europe’s past.
◂ The Europe bus stop in Fontbarlettes, Valence;
a 1970s “new town” that has since gone into
steep decline.
Rossini was Here
Our story begins in a French banlieue . Fontbarlettes is an unheard-of suburb on the outskirts of the southeastern
city of Valence, and it is here that we are suddenly reminded of European heritage.
The cold mistral wind sweeps the concrete slabs and crumbling housing projects of Fontbarlettes as they lie
barren among parking lots and treeless, deserted parks. Abstract art made on the assembly line of the public
good has been parachuted onto the streets of this forgotten town and left to rust in rain and snow. Tiny
balconies, designed to accommodate middle-class desires, have been crammed with dish antennas aimed at
faraway satellites. The shopping center is a U-shaped piazza: utilitarian single-story big box structures sheltered
under a superficially postmodern roof. The heart of Fontbarlettes is an empty concrete rectangle. All shops
including the Lidl supermarket are kept behind vandal-proof metal fences.
Fontbarlettes is European. Not just in the obvious sense that it is situated in Europe; in fact, its streets and
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squares are named after it. Plaques and street signs carry the names of Mozart, Rossini, Gounod, and others. Bus
shelters are called “Beethoven” and “Europe”—epochal grandeur confronted with assorted shapes of prefab
concrete. When the “bankruptcy” of the ideals of the welfare state becomes a matter of consensus, policymakers
usually blame the buildings, and order their removal as if they were statues of Lenin or Saddam Hussein. On one
occasion the composer Jean-Michel Jarre accompanied—celebrated, in fact—the demolition of a public housing
estate in Meaux with a spectacular synthesizer concert and light show.1 Remnants of large-scale urban planning
projects are being replaced with low-density urban sprawl; aging “rational” grids have made way for parodies of
villas and castles.
▴ The future as a concept car: 1972 Lotus Europa.
In the early 1970s, perhaps the word “Europe” resonated differently. Memories of World War II were fresher.
Europe, as a streamlined ideal, would bring to mind something abstract and futuristic, like the Lotus Europa
sports car, manufactured in the UK in the early 70s around the same time Fontbarlettes was planned and built.
Memory could come to the aid of this abstract European utopia by providing an extensive repository of reliably
historical figures—composers, writers, scientists, politicians, as well as battles, cities…
Just now, these European symbols seem to be on strike, much like Fontbarlettes’ local youth, and indeed all of
France. A Fontbarlettes blog site shows an image of a burnt car overwritten with the word ROSSINI, in
pragmatically disrespectful sans-serif. 2 The name of the composer Gioacchino Rossini (Bologna, 1792–Paris,
1868) now merely indicates the coordinates of a torched Peugeot. The names that serve as Fontbarlettes’ heroic
European way-finding devices are gambled on a world in which common memory is expected to ensure future
coherence; the lack thereof is what is at issue. A bygone world of grands hommes is confronted with the multiethnic, multicultural reality of Europe today.
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▴ Torched car at the Rue Rossini, Fontbarlettes. Image courtesy fontbarlgang26's blog.
The French banlieues have developed something the sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls “advanced marginality,” a
tremendously powerful condition with regard to the condition of border, or periphery. With a particular focus on
the situation in Paris, Wacquant evokes “the trinity of ‘sans’ recently anointed in the French political debate (the
job-less , home-less and paper-less migrants).” 3 Revamped (historical) city centers, meticulously styled and kept,
become “global destinations” for capital, culture, and investment, while cheaply and quickly constructed urban
peripheries become ever poorer, harder to reach, and more difficult to leave.
Center-periphery oppositions like these are increasingly found as borders within Europe. According to the French
thinker Étienne Balibar, there are “modes of inclusion and exclusion in the European sphere.”4 Europe is a
“borderland,” anything but the patchwork of peace and prosperity conforming to the EU’s official brand image. As
the abstract contours of Europe sharpen, it is as if we thought we saw a friend or relative in the distance who, as
he approaches, turns out to be someone else completely.
As Europe makes progress toward greater formal unity, it moves away from the memories and symbols of the
past that had previously rendered the process of integration meaningful and coherent. The theorist Avishai
Margalit outlines the complexity of shared memory, and the devices used to ensure it:
In modern societies, characterized by an elaborate division of real labor, the division of mnemonic labor is
elaborate. In traditional society there is a direct line from the people to their priest or storyteller or shaman. But
shared memory in a modern society travels from person to person through institutions, such as archives, and
through communal mnemonic devices, such as monuments and the names of streets. Some of these mnemonic
devices are notoriously bad reminders. Monuments, even those located in salient places, become “invisible” or
illegible with the passage of time. Whether good or bad as mnemonic devices, these complicated communal
institutions are responsible, to a large extent, for our shared memories.5
Recent achievements of and within the European Union such as the single currency and the enlargement process
are majestic geopolitical facts. But they are hard to remember as meaningful in and of themselves. They are
easier to remember for what they do . Europe’s inhabitants often do not register its achievements as historical
milestones. Instead, they see them as mere matter-of-fact life conditions. This, in turn, could secretly constitute
the deepest sense of belonging one may ever feel. What goes unquestioned in the daily grind, perhaps, is the
identity.
Europe: the Endless Think Tank?
In Amsterdam in June 2008, an audience of over 1,000 people gathered to attend “Identity, please!,” a
conference on the identity of Europe. This intellectual Rock am Ring featured a heavyweight line-up of speakers
including George Steiner, Francis Fukuyama, Sarah Rothenberg, Michael Ignatieff, Avishai Margalit, Adam
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Zagajewski, David Dubal, Allan Janik, Lewis Lockwood, and Roger Scruton, among others, chaired by Rob Riemen,
director of the magazine and think tank Nexus. “Identity, please!” pondered the grand question of shared
memory in the European identity, and the tricky issue of the role of culture, the arts, and humanism. The
intellectual mood was accordingly drenched in melancholia; from the outset it was clear that a decline in
European culture and a withering away of public awareness of its meaning were already accomplished facts.
Keynote speaker George Steiner—announced as “the last European”—compared music, mathematics, and poetry
in their competitive aspiration to be the mother of the Arts. After Steiner’s talk came a debate on the
contemporary relevance of Petrarch, Beethoven, and Wittgenstein. When Riemen invited Allan Janik to speak for
his dead master (“If Wittgenstein were here today, what would he say?”), Janik responded that Wittgenstein
probably wouldn’t have been happy with what we are doing now—implicating the conference, not Europe.
Volumes are written, conference centers packed, NGOs funded, debates fueled by the questions of European
identity, unification, and governance. Think tanks and academia produce page-turners like Why Europe Will Run
the 21st Century, The European Dream , and The United States of Europe . Each of these titles heralds the
multilateral concept of power used to build European integration and create European influence, opposing it to
the more old-fashioned political and military deployment of direct coercion.
Wielding the “power of weakness,” the European Union presents a new brand of political legitimacy. The promise
of EU admission is a major source of policy and governance reform in potential member states, without the need
for authoritarian command. Europe wields a form of network power, providing incentives to conform to the
standards of the club. The EU ultimately offers its prospective members the choice between membership and
oblivion—as Mark Leonard argues, “Europe doesn’t change countries by invading them: its biggest threat is
having nothing to do with them at all.”6 The handshake of EU admission is wielded as a power without power—
one of a long series of oxymorons shaped to fit the EU.
▴ Borderless ideology ? “Europe without barriers” – a promotional brand for the Czech EU presidency, 2009.
The irony is that the manifold idealist definitions of the European project developed in think tanks and academia
peacefully coexist with an unprecedented surveillance and fortification of outer and inner borders. Europe is
ultimately a speculative object, which easily lends itself to academic debate, scholarly research, policy
experiments, cultural integration, and artistic and cultural exchange, on the condition that none fundamentally
affects the other. All realms coexist peacefully behind protective walls under the bleak stare of CCTV and data
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mining. This is only a logical extension of “power sans.” The “surveillance state” of Europe after the Cold War is a
place where obedience and submission no longer need to be enforced by threat, because surveillance has been
internalized. As Mark Leonard observes:
The French philosopher Michel Foucault showed how, from the nineteenth century, advanced societies moved
from relying largely on the deterrence of visible expressions of might to discipline enforced by making potential
subjects of power visible, through regulation, official papers, CCTV and prisons. Foucault argues that the shift
from spectacle to surveillance allowed modern societies to be policed at a fraction of the cost of the ‘Ancien
Régime’. The key was finding ways to record and monitor the behavior of citizens in a systematic way through
the development of timetables, identity cards, photographs, medical records, and laws. 7
Advanced Marginality and Inner Borders
Despite the European project trespassing national boundaries and overriding national interests, its progression
cannot be endless. The threshold of membership cuts through regions and former empires, which have cultural,
linguistic, political, and religious ties predating the EU network. It is the rationality of that network which is also
its weakness. Consequently, the border with Europe’s “outside” is becoming an ever more radical and ever more
irrational threshold. A border between the Netherlands and Germany (once fundamental, now superseded by
Schengen Europe), is a less elementary boundary than the one between the European Union and Turkey, a
potential member state.
The European advance stalls in east- and southbound directions as it enters the former Russian empire and the
Arab world, respectively. 8 The EU’s difference from its outside becomes simultaneously defined in cultural,
historical, and religious terms (politicizing it)—in spite of the fact that the very experience of large differences and
the continuous development of new cultural hybrids, have become an essential element of life in Europe and are
perhaps the essential element of inhabiting a democratic space. As the progression of its outer border stalls, the
EU will at some point face the limits to its own brand of tolerance and diversity.
▴ Logo of the EU border protection agency
Frontex, set in Trajan square capitals.
Image courtesy Frontex and Wikimedia
Commons.
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The EU’s official ideology of cultural diversity and tolerance is paired with a collaborative program of border
management. Much of this program is executed by a Warsaw-based agency called Frontex. Curiously, Frontex is
located close to the EU border, far from the EU headquarters in Brussels and Strasbourg. The porous walls of the
European Union move increasingly away from the mainland to camps and prisons constructed in outposts like
Ceuta and Lampedusa, and to facilities in various African countries serving the supreme ethical goal of
counteracting human trafficking, yet in practice also working to stem illegal immigration. Since Roman times, a
city’s walls have been monuments to its integrity, ordering clear-cut divisions between friend and enemy, relative
and stranger, ally and invader (the terms around which political debates regarding citizenship are currently
centered). Europe’s contemporary city walls are degrees more advanced and sneakier; inside the borderland, the
walls repeat at every checkpoint and with every camera’s eye. 9 The logo of Frontex, set in square capitals (as
found on Trajan’s Column in Rome), reads: LIBERTAS SECURITAS JUSTITIA.10
Meanwhile antiglobalists, G8 and G20 protesters, media, and border activists make efforts to organize an
expanding network of resistance against the way the world—and Europe in particular— is governed. In a system
of transnational political interdependence, political accountability becomes an issue; it becomes difficult to
determine who is responsible, and whom to address. The protesters’ nodal points are the “summits” where this
elusive regime of networked governance solidifies. Potentially, the impending conditions of life insecurity under
the financial crisis could unite class strata into new alliances. The UK Ministry of Defense recently published a
bleak report on future “strategic trends,” stating that “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class,
taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx.” 11
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▴ Athens, 17 December 2008: At the Acropolis Greek protesters unfurl banners in four European languages.
Image courtesy Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press.
The new revolutionary class has already been theorized; and it might congregate under the compound flag of
Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s idea of the “multitude.” The term implies how internally differentiated the
coalition is, as a “network of singularities.” 12 When a seemingly isolated incident triggers the multitude to gather
around a much bigger cause, its target may be any form of government or business—national, post-national,
imperial, or neoliberal. For example, massive riots broke out in Athens in 2008 after a police officer shot a 15-year
old student. Subsequently, the riots became about “capital, the EU and its parties,” as Aleka Papariga, head of the
Greek Communist Party, put it. “The people must make use of their experience. The parties that lied to them
about Maastricht, about the EMU, are lying to them now as well.”13
The Greek protests culminated in a temporary occupation of that most prominent among European historical
symbols, the Acropolis. Meanwhile, the protesters’ modalities of social organization were, and continue to be built
around the semi-private agora of online social networks, which account for new forms of pragmatism. For
example, on the social networking site Twitter, the Greek riots were simply called the “griots.”
Crisis Europe and the Architecture of Protocol
In early 2009, with the financial crisis spreading, the Netherlands were hit by an advertising campaign produced
by the global fast food chain McDonald’s which centered on the “Euro-” prefix. The campaign made a terrific—
and terrifying—point: McDonald’s hamburgers, an American invention for sure, were shown in an unappealing,
plain design under the caption “Euroknaller,” indicating their discount pricing. 14 The “Euro-” prefix, while in
theory an all-purpose promoter of the idea of Europe, in practice designates various standardized, prefab
products, which are always, first and foremost, cheap. Mozzarella di Bufala is never “Eurocheese,” Coppa di
Parma will not be known as “Euromeat.” Regulations now protect the local and regional denominations of almost
every type of food, but the “Euro-” prefix is freely employed to say “discount.”
The effects of the post-historical virus on display in Europe’s treatment of its
own key symbols become most poignant in the design of the Euro banknotes.
Since their introduction in 2002, the Euro banknotes have generally failed to
bring forth something as significantly symbolic and memorable as the national
currencies of the Eurozone countries they replaced. Besides their emphasis on
invisible anti-counterfeiting markings turning any “visible” design gesture into
decoration (an electronic prison liberating design from any “functional” alibi),
the Euro notes display a decidedly post-historical interpretation of European
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heritage.
In 1996, the European Central Bank announced a competition for the art to be
displayed on the forthcoming notes. The contest was won by Robert Kalina
from Austria, with a design proposal inconspicuously called “T 382.” The
buildings drawn by Kalina as Euro art do not actually exist; they are the entirely
fictional mash-up of various European architectural styles, turned into an
anonymous parody of a hybrid. With no single nation state being prioritized
over another, no hearts beat faster and no tears are shed over the European
symbols proposed by the in-house designer of the Austrian National Bank. The
cost of this all-encompassing gesture is a radical loss of meaning; the Eurozone
having become an architecture of protocol, a historical non-place, a
“Eurohouse” stretching into nothingness. The handshake of historical building
▴ Advertising by McDonald's, Amsterdam,
January 2009, mocking the cheapness of “euro-” styles from across Europe denounces nationalism and self-interest, but in doing
brands in the context of the economic crisis.
so also eradicates all other emotions, until an utterly sterile amalgamate of
empty formal gestures is achieved.
The Euro’s invisible security features are far more important than its exterior characteristics. Hence, “meaning” is
transferred from the symbolic function of money as a signifier of a common European cultural, historical,
geographical, and monetary space to that of technological protocol. In 2002 the computer scientist Markus Kuhn
discovered a graphic pattern comprised of five rings on the Euro notes. It turned out to be the mark preventing
them from being photocopied or scanned by alerting any software to interrupt the reproduction process. Although
the same constellation is present in banknotes of countries from around the world, Kuhn named his discovery the
“EURion Constellation” after the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) name for Euro and the
constellation Orion, which the figure resembles.15
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▴ Enlarged version of the “Eurion constellation,”
an anti-counterfeiting mark on the Euro
banknotes as discovered by Markus Kuhn.
Once, “early” EU iconography showed Europe as a building under construction, or Europe as a ship with sails set
in the national colors of member states’ flags. Despite their inspirational charm and iconographic power, these
designs wanted Europe to appear as sovereign force, rather than as an evasive protocol power. If an architecture
of protocol is the lasting residue of the loss of historical meaning in Europe—think tanks notwithstanding—the
hidden security imprint of Kuhn’s “EURion Constellation” is not the sideletter, but the contract. It may turn out to
be much more of an iconographic invention than hitherto acknowledged for a condition in which European
identity has been relegated to the spaces and standards of protocol, and its microscopic city walls.
The writer and thinker George Steiner, keynote speaker at the “Identity, please!” conference organized by Nexus,
glorified Europe as the place where streets and squares are named after writers, scientists, and artists, where
proper names are saved from oblivion by people wandering the public spaces of their cities. “The shared culture
we have is the culture of the cities,” Steiner said in a 1995 interview. “When you come to Europe, what strikes
you immediately is the great diversity of all the cities, each one with its historical moment of grandeur, its
historical past being engraved in stone and there to be admired. And therefore, this is our sharing, this is what
we have in common.” 16 George Steiner personifies an entire civilization; the implausibly well-read expert of
experts who spends long solitary hours in his extensive library with the books of his fellow Greek, Roman,
French, and German grands hommes. The child of an Austrian Jewish family, Steiner has lived through the
decline of Mitteleuropa and its descent into inhumanity and mayhem. When asked about the allegedly elitist
nature of his Europe of ideas and achievements, engraved and embossed on street signs, walls, and monuments,
Steiner replied that:
There is very great anger and bitterness from human beings who have felt left out, who were never elected to
Seite 10 von 12
03.12.09 15:06
the club, and that anger and bitterness is increasing all around us. There is, I hope, among those of us who have
been privileged, and very lucky to be in the club, some severe self-questioning: we must ask ourselves what the
price for this privilege of discourse was.” 17
The next stage—perhaps liberating—is a Europe without history or form.
▴ Fontbarlettes' Fournil de l’Europe bakery at the shopping square.
☁
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1 The French artist Cyprien Gaillard has used video footage of this demolition in his 2007 piece
Desnianski Raion.
2 See → (accessed February 1, 2009).
3 Loïc Wacquant,
Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2008), 245.
4 Étienne Balibar,
We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship , trans. James Swenson
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 3.
5 Avishai Margalit,
6 Mark Leonard,
The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 54.
Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005), 6.
7 Leonard, 39.
Seite 11 von 12
03.12.09 15:06
8 Frits Bolkestein, a former European Commissioner for the internal market, taxation, and the customs union, and
a fierce opponent of Turkey’s admission, rhetorically asks: “What is the basic identity of Turkey? We are all
formed by our history. Turkey has a marvellous history, in particular of the heyday of the Ottoman Empire. But it
is not a European history. Europe is marked by the great developments of its past: Christianity, Renaissance,
Enlightenment, Democracy, Industrialisation. Turkey does not fit in that mould.” Frits Bolkestein, “Don’t let Turkey
in,” November 2006, → (accessed 1 February 2009).
9 As the historian Karl Schlögel, one of the most realistic and yet lyrical observers of Europe, puts it: “The door
we used to go through is now a double one: the traditional, physical door and the electronic one. The public
sphere is armed. Mounted cameras swivel automatically. They face the empty space that is lit up by spotlights,
the area that people cross from time to time. The gates are guarded. In the lobbies, those who check all
movement, faces, bags, and identity cards have taken up position discreetly yet demonstratively. No movement
without supervision. The security check has become routine. We have grown used to showing our IDs and
passports, to looking at the camera, opening our bags and briefcases. Wherever there is security, there is
something of importance. The important things are in the capitals. The pieces of equipment used in security are
monuments to importance. Security-free zones indicate that coverage is not complete. Security crosses borders. It
is one of the most important indicators of the speed at which Europe is coming together.” Karl Schlögel,
“Archipelago Europe,” October 2007, → (accessed February 1, 2009).
10 See → (accessed February 1, 2009).
11 See
The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036 , → (accessed February 1, 2009), and Richard
Norton-Taylor, “Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future,” The Guardian, April 9 2007,
→ (accessed February 1, 2009).
12 Antonio Negri, “The Monstrous Multitude,” lecture delivered at the Volksbühne, Berlin, October 6, 2004;
published in Empire and Beyond , trans. Ed Emery (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 47.
13 “Ιnterview with Greek communist party leader Papariga,” → (accessed February 1, 2009).
14 The Dutch neologism “‘Euroknaller”’ is hard difficult to translate, but would might be rendered in English as
something like “‘Euroblast”’ or “‘Eurexplosion.”’ in English
15 See the EURion constellation constellation as “‘discovered”’ by Markus Kuhn at →, (accessed 1 February 2009).
16 George Steiner, “Culture: the price you pay,” in Richard Kearney,
States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary
Thinkers on the European Mind (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 83.
17 Ibid., 84.
Metahaven is a studio for research and design based in Amsterdam and Brussels, consisting of Daniel van der
Velden, Vinca Kruk, and Gon Zifroni. By “research,” the group intends a gathering of data, inquiry, imagination,
and, ultimately, speculation, which informs their work in graphic design, branding, and iconography, as well as in
architecture. Metahaven has previously created a visual identity for the mini-state Sealand, for research projects
around the former House of People in Bucharest, and for the European Internet search engine Quaero.
Metahaven’s work is exhibited as part of the traveling exhibition “Forms of Inquiry: the Architecture of Critical
Graphic Design” at the Architectural Association, London, and in “On Purpose: Design Concepts” at Arnolfini,
Bristol, “Since we last spoke about monuments” at Stroom, The Hague, and “Affiche Frontière,” a solo exhibition
at CAPC, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux. At the 2008 Venice Architectural Biennial, Metahaven was
represented with a lecture at the Dutch pavilion. In addition to design, research, and writing, Metahaven lectures
widely, and its members teach at institutions including Yale University in New Haven, the Academy of Arts in
Arnhem, the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and the School of Visual Arts in Valence, France.
www.metahaven.net
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