Sealand Euro – Four PartsA new typology for Sealand Euro coins is created by emptying out Euro co
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Sealand Euro – Four PartsA new typology for Sealand Euro coins is created by emptying out Euro coins from their European symbolism – and recombining them. The ornamental ‘void’ that emerges becomes, ironically, again an ornament.
Discourse
The Empire of Everything and Nothing unites – Sealand Eurozone
From simulating a trustworthy reality to being viewed as the mistrusted Other, Sealand, the world’s first physical data haven and safest place on earth following Fort Knox, is in fact longing for the absolute ordinary, the even banal, everyday pattern of state existence. What has been known under Sealand the myth exists since 1967 in international waters, six miles off the British coast, where a WWII fortress was transformed into the sovereign mini-state named Sealand.
Ever since, the heart of the free world was subject to international scrutiny by representing a test case for sovereign state power.
The self-governed mini-state Sealand will enter the gambling arena of the euro zone by launching its own Sealand EUR 1 and EUR 2 coins. A young team of graphic designers as referred to in here as the Meta Haven Team, has set itself the ambitious goal to create these euro coins for Sealand. The team had worked along the same strategies that would normally been applied by its absorbing Other, the continuous copy-machine Sealand, the pirate that does not follow the conventional rules as ‘we’ know them. Besides its own Sealand ideology with which it wilfully performs since over 40 years, it really does not aim to become one of ‘us’ – a member state of the European Union. And why should it?
Past experiences tell us that being a neighbouring country necessarily does not imply that one is automatically granted access to the precious membership of the European Union. One can arguably say that Sealand-the-construct was ever part of ‘Europe’s history’. Both territorial realities, Europe and Sealand, were more or less put into place after military actions had successfully been fought and the war against Nazi Germany was won. Made up of all its different enclaves, Europe-the-construct as well as Sealand can neither be defined as a political entity, nor as a historic-cultural entity, nor as an ethnic entity. What tons of pages and treaties mean to form the various constitutions of Europe in time, so are the endless carriers of simulating nationality that circulate around the fortress of Sealand. So what does Sealand mean to the European Union?
By joining Eurozone, the Meta Haven Team already comments on the constructiveness of Sealand by denying its total existence as being a true state of affair. Knowingly aware that Sealand will never enter the domain of respectful states, it is now claiming the absolute fake, producing itself as a sticker that can be attached to all national sides on the original euro coin. At the same time, Sealand is running a good course in drawing attention to the unwanted fixed identity of Europe, Europeanness and to the formation of national identity respectively. Can Europe’s identity be manifested in the common visual representations of a singular flag, a passport, a euro symbol and euro currency? Or does it need to improve on new strategies that enable the acknowledgment of all the European identities there are?
The visual identity of contemporary Europe is conceived to be a low budget, economy class, design look-a-like that performs itself as an empty carrier and meaningless label. Besides the void of Europe’s ‘political’ symbols, it likes to internationally present itself in the corporate narratives of: Eurovision, Eurosport, Euroshopper, Eurozone, Eurostar, Eurobank, Eurocard and Euro2004. To underline this cause of direction, the Meta Haven Team does not aim to produce another metal carrier within the national arrangement of euro coins. Since the economic power of Sealand is not yet boosting itself to become the Chinese dragon of Europe, it therefore strives for the real fake – the poor man’s Versace – a Sealand euro coin sticker that attaches itself like a wide-spread computer virus on the national side of the original coins. A simulated euro coin is born – the Las Vegas of Europe.
The fact that Sealand wants to become ordinary, ordinarily accepted by showing off its glamorous state-being, thus already creates an absurd laugher on the various sides of examination. If Sealand claims to be a true state in its fata morgana-like appearance in the middle of the North Sea, what kind of qualities does today’s nation-state need, to be granted officialdom and acceptance within the Euro zone and what are the criteria’s to join this muddled-up union of largely invisible legislative virtuosity?
Discourse
The Empire of Everything and Nothing unites – Sealand Eurozone
From simulating a trustworthy reality to being viewed as the mistrusted Other, Sealand, the world’s first physical data haven and safest place on earth following Fort Knox, is in fact longing for the absolute ordinary, the even banal, everyday pattern of state existence. What has been known under Sealand the myth exists since 1967 in international waters, six miles off the British coast, where a WWII fortress was transformed into the sovereign mini-state named Sealand.
Ever since, the heart of the free world was subject to international scrutiny by representing a test case for sovereign state power.
The self-governed mini-state Sealand will enter the gambling arena of the euro zone by launching its own Sealand EUR 1 and EUR 2 coins. A young team of graphic designers as referred to in here as the Meta Haven Team, has set itself the ambitious goal to create these euro coins for Sealand. The team had worked along the same strategies that would normally been applied by its absorbing Other, the continuous copy-machine Sealand, the pirate that does not follow the conventional rules as ‘we’ know them. Besides its own Sealand ideology with which it wilfully performs since over 40 years, it really does not aim to become one of ‘us’ – a member state of the European Union. And why should it?
Past experiences tell us that being a neighbouring country necessarily does not imply that one is automatically granted access to the precious membership of the European Union. One can arguably say that Sealand-the-construct was ever part of ‘Europe’s history’. Both territorial realities, Europe and Sealand, were more or less put into place after military actions had successfully been fought and the war against Nazi Germany was won. Made up of all its different enclaves, Europe-the-construct as well as Sealand can neither be defined as a political entity, nor as a historic-cultural entity, nor as an ethnic entity. What tons of pages and treaties mean to form the various constitutions of Europe in time, so are the endless carriers of simulating nationality that circulate around the fortress of Sealand. So what does Sealand mean to the European Union?
By joining Eurozone, the Meta Haven Team already comments on the constructiveness of Sealand by denying its total existence as being a true state of affair. Knowingly aware that Sealand will never enter the domain of respectful states, it is now claiming the absolute fake, producing itself as a sticker that can be attached to all national sides on the original euro coin. At the same time, Sealand is running a good course in drawing attention to the unwanted fixed identity of Europe, Europeanness and to the formation of national identity respectively. Can Europe’s identity be manifested in the common visual representations of a singular flag, a passport, a euro symbol and euro currency? Or does it need to improve on new strategies that enable the acknowledgment of all the European identities there are?
The visual identity of contemporary Europe is conceived to be a low budget, economy class, design look-a-like that performs itself as an empty carrier and meaningless label. Besides the void of Europe’s ‘political’ symbols, it likes to internationally present itself in the corporate narratives of: Eurovision, Eurosport, Euroshopper, Eurozone, Eurostar, Eurobank, Eurocard and Euro2004. To underline this cause of direction, the Meta Haven Team does not aim to produce another metal carrier within the national arrangement of euro coins. Since the economic power of Sealand is not yet boosting itself to become the Chinese dragon of Europe, it therefore strives for the real fake – the poor man’s Versace – a Sealand euro coin sticker that attaches itself like a wide-spread computer virus on the national side of the original coins. A simulated euro coin is born – the Las Vegas of Europe.
The fact that Sealand wants to become ordinary, ordinarily accepted by showing off its glamorous state-being, thus already creates an absurd laugher on the various sides of examination. If Sealand claims to be a true state in its fata morgana-like appearance in the middle of the North Sea, what kind of qualities does today’s nation-state need, to be granted officialdom and acceptance within the Euro zone and what are the criteria’s to join this muddled-up union of largely invisible legislative virtuosity?
