The
European flag; originally designed by Arsène Heitz (a French
draughtsman, born in Strasbourg and worked at the Council of Europe)
and Paul Lévy (a Belgium born Jewish Holocaust survivor who worked
for many years as Director of Information at the Council of Europe)
was presented in 1955 at The Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
In
the physical sense, the European blue colour functions as a
monochrome within a modernist tradition with its purity laws, it’s
longing for transcendence and an optimistic believe in the utopian
potential. Simultaneously in a psychological sense the blue fabric
functions as a blue-screen (chroma key, used in the TV and movie
industry) where the broad and critical thoughts about Europe and the
European Union can be projected on, an idea that in both cases is a
parallel to the so-called ‘European collective thought’.
Fundamental to this research is displaying the monochromes as
ethnographical documents that are mapping the economic and social
changes of many local communities by embodying an ethnographic and
sociological value as remnants from the various disappearing or
already disappeared textile industries of Europe.
The
research
‘European contextualising in analytical sociology and
ethnographical representation on history and the present’ started
at the end of 2011. Components of this research are shown in the solo
exhibition EUROPA
at GAMeC - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo, Italy.
And in the group exhibition Autumn
of Modernism curated
by Lorenzo Benedetti and took place at De Vleeshal and at the
Temporary Gallery in Cologne, Germany.
The
flag of Europe consists of a circle of 12 golden (yellow) stars on an
azure background. It is the flag and emblem of the Council of Europe
(CoE) and the European Union (EU). It is also often used to indicate
eurozone countries, and, more loosely, to represent the continent of
Europe or the countries of Europe independent of any of these
institutions. The number of stars does not vary according to the
members of either organisation as they are intended to represent all
the peoples of Europe, even those outside the EU, but inside the CoE.
The flag was designed by Arsène Heitz and Paul Lévy in 1955 for the
CoE as its symbol, and the CoE urged it to be adopted by other
organisations. In 1985 the EU, which was then the European Economic
Community (EEC), adopted it as its own flag (having had no flag of
its own before) at the initiative of the European Parliament. The
flag is not mentioned in the EU's treaties, its incorporation being
dropped
along with the European Constitution, but it is formally
adopted in law. Despite its being the flag of two separate
organisations, it is often more associated with the EU due to the
EU's higher profile and heavy usage of the emblem. The flag has also
been used to represent Europe in sporting events and as a
pro-democracy banner outside the Union.[5] It has partly inspired
other flags, such as those of other European organisations and those
of states where the EU has been heavily involved (such as Bosnia and
Herzegovina and Kosovo).
