Design of a flag for the exhibition "Westopia"
Bice Bugatti Foundation, Villa Vertua, Nova Milanese (Italy) / 2017
Design by Lluis Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, Ignacio G. Galan, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Alejandra Navarrete Llopis and Marina Otero Verzier. Exhibition curated by Parasite 2.0.
During the debates preceding the Brexit referendum, a video of a hooded and allegedly British individual attempting to burn the EU flag went viral. After accusing the EU of taking away “our [that is, British] nationality, our identity, our free speech and our sovereignty,” the man approached the star-filled blue flag with a cigarette lighter. His action, however, produced no evident result: the piece of fabric—manufactured following EU regulations on flammable materials—would not light, forcing the man to give up his enterprise after two minutes. Ultimately, the video exposes how the EU flag not only embodies ideological constructs on identity and sovereignty, but also how belonging to the EU has material implications in the everyday objects of shared landscapes.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXKv07ghKIw sheds light on the materiality of flags by reasserting their phenomenal conditions. In the flag we propose, constructed entirely out of inflammable fire-protection foam, symbolic and aesthetic values rely exclusively on the manufacturing process. The flag emphasizes not the idea of belonging to abstract socio-political entities, but rather the materiality of those forms of belonging as such.