The Role of Images and Architecture in Making European Democracy.

Every political structure is defined by its communication systems—a series of rules and technologies intended for the production and distribution of information; a set of instruments which dissect between the said and unsaid, the seen and unseen. From its beginning in the 1960s, politics in the European Union have been driven by the establishment of a media compound system of communications—including satellites, servers, power stations, telephone and telegraphy cables, radio stations, TV sets, press halls, and editing rooms. However, in the past decades, this compound system has been criticized for not raising any enough identification in the creation of a European citizenship. Architecture, addressed as a substantial part of an “Iconographic Deficit,” – a term coined by Rem Koolhaas, whose barcode of European flags is also part of the exhibition at CLB – ought to bring solutions in creating new public imaginaries for Europe. In a cultural historic analysis, Dennis Pohl (University of the Arts, Berlin) talks about the role of architecture for the EU, and question what iconographic images mean for Europe.

Talk by Dennis Pohl, moderated by Marie Rosenkranz from the European Democracy Lab.

Image: „The Image of Europe“ European Union exhibition in Brussels in 2004, led by Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf from AMO. Photo by Hans Werlemann. © OMA.