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Abstract
This paper examines a number of works of art that relate to the issues of borders, mobility, space and place in Britain and the European Union (EU). It focuses on the years 2014–16 in which the financial crisis, the migration crisis and the impending referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU weighed heavily upon public debate. Some of the works considered—installations by the Italian group The Tomorrow and by Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture—can be related directly to the EU’s own initiatives: specifically, the New Narrative for Europe that was championed by the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. Others—stencilled murals by the street artist Banksy in Clacton-on-Sea and Calais—approach the issue of Europe more obliquely. All of the works, it is argued, engage in forms of visual and spatial thinking that bear upon the idea of Europe and its much-discussed imaginary.
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 ‘un objet politique non-identifié’.
2 This paper was first drafted in 2015, around a year before the UK referendum on EU membership. Since that time, events have moved quickly. I have made the minimum possible changes to take account of this.
3 All of these figures relate to the period 2010–11.
4 Jerolmack (Citation2008, 80–81) credits New York City Parks Commissioner Thomas P. Hoving with the first use of the phrase ‘rats with wings’ in 1966. Discussing the restoration of Bryant Park, Hoving and the park supervisor described the pigeons as ‘vandals’ while also decrying the presence of litterers, homeless people and homosexuals in the park.
5 Banksy of course has a long history of working at borders, most notably at the West Bank Barrier. For reasons of space, this work will not be discussed here.
6 This form of words was used in the wall text relating to the installation.
7 The Tomorrow’s web journal is available at: http://thetomorrow.net/about/
8 There is a vast art historical, scholarly literature on the Raft of the Medusa. Theodore Bazin’s (Citation1987–Citation1997, 6, 19–20) monumental work includes a summary of the bibliography up to the end of the last century. For a recent major study in English, see Alhadeff (Citation2002).
9 As this article was about to go to print Banksy created an image that did address the EU (and Brexit) directly. A magnificent mural in Dover, occupying almost the entire side of a building, showed a workman chipping the gold stars from the EU flag.
10 That the images address the media first and foremost is underlined by the fact that the official photographs are widely published by large media companies while their use in academic publications is flatly forbidden.
11 A recording of the event is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4LM_kviiv4
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Caspar Pearson
Caspar Pearson is a senior lecturer in the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex.