Middle of Europe, (2009-in progress)
Installation
Map, stone tablets
Dimension variable
Photos by Marián Ravasz
Middle of Europe, NYC/Brooklyn, 9.10.2009
Location: Alma on Dobbin Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Other locations:
Horažďovice (CZ), 3.6.2010; Moscow (RUS), 15.10.2010; Rome (ITA), 10.11.2010; Budapest (HU), 1.12.2010; Bratislava (SK), 29.6.2011
“The project Middles of Europe focuses on how statements thought to be exact and scientific in nature become relative in light of national identity. Centered around a map, it shows and ironically undermines the efforts of various nation states to “find” the geographic center of Europe on their own territory. While the geographic middle of Europe could theoretically be unambiguosly determited by science, at the moment nine European countries have got a monument demonstrating that the middle is in that particular country. It is always telling when and in what situation a country searches for and finds the center in itself. For example in 1992 Slovakia, exactly when it was getting ready for independency, erected such a monument in Kremnica hoping to testify that the new state is not a periphery, but rather a center. The map contains all the nine centers of Europe pinpointed on it, and also indicates when the claims were made.”