Searching for Blue in the European Union Flag

On the occasion of the group exhibition Blue Times, curated by Amira Gad and Nicolaus Schafhausen, Kunsthalle Wien presents the panel discussion Searching for Blue in the European Union Flag. The title is eponymous with an essay by Charles Esche in Remco Torenbosch’s publication European Contextualising in Analytical Sociology and Ethnographical Representation on History and Present (2014) that forms the core of this event. This publication is the result of extensive research into the history of the European flag, opening up an intriguing discussion on the changing socio-economics of European Union nations, the disappearance of once booming textile industries and the strong national identities of a union in flux.

The research work for the book included compiling a collection of fabric monochromes woven by weavers from all 28 member states of the EU in the basic color of the European flag. These collated monochromes create a map of the socio-economic shift within EU member communities, an embodiment of Europe’s disappearing textile industries. The color blue in these monochromes can be viewed as a physical representation of the EU’s modernist tradition, its purity laws, its longing for transcendence and the optimistic belief in the utopian potential.

Participants: Amira Gad, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Remco Torenbosch

Part of the Vienna Art Week.