UNF symposium / Nasjonale symboler og sekularisering av staten /

Hovedforedrag: (English)

“»Welcome. My name is Felipe. I run antipodes café with Tuva, and this is like a map of the entire universe. As captivating as it may sound to cartographers and emperors among us, it is evidently useless to make a map of an empire in the same size as that empire. Despite their dimensions and functional purposes, maps—and all visual representations—can come in handy for specific agendas. Projection, orientation, sizes, language, colors, which information is shown, which one is not, and so forth… So, I set up the map on my phone with the south pointing forward, and the world turned out to be quite interesting.

In Spain, to become disoriented can be said as ‘perder el norte,’ which means to lose the north. I do not reinvent wheels; we took the word antipode from Timæus by Plato. I am just arriving later with a map, as I am learning to be present, to read the sun and other stars, the moon, shadows, and even some currents. In the same coordinates of some maps, we can find historical books, history books, books of his-story, that together with reassuring fables—if not merged—they managed to leave small room for other papers. But the worker who reads can also build bookshelves and cannot stop making questions: · To win a sense of direction? · To leave the privileged reference frame behind? · To travel fearlessly into the unknown? Without entering into amazing singularities, I’ll try to condense ten years in ten to fifteen minutes. If you want more, let’s continue on the streets, at a bar, or while watching the horizon… Your move. We’re here, and we have nothing of our own but time. Do we?

‘We emerged from microbes in muck; apes are our cousins; our thoughts are not entirely our own, and on top of that, we’re making a mess of our planet and becoming a danger to ourselves.’

This week, the world’s population increased by one million. For human history, four days is less than a sneeze; for the infinite universe, it’s just nothing, as all we do, as all we will. Ten years ago, Norway had around half a million fewer people than today. Precisely in 2011, 77 Norwegians lost their lives at the hands of an ethnonationalistic fellow countryman. In the aftermath of those attacks against diversity and humanity, I moved to Norway as a rapid response, driven by love as a core reason and curiosity regarding design. None of those three options were on any migration forms. I will not expand on what made me start with this series; reasons are many. It can’t surprise any butterfly that I was born in a place with free, compulsory, and secular education since 1876. But let’s focus on what was done from antipodes café with ‘Utforsking av Norges flagg.’ Strategically speaking, the series follows a similar dynamic structure as other comments we have made. But as a big difference, we did not conceive this comment with any sort of supplantation of reality as in other of our cultural initiatives. There is nothing new in exploring national symbols across creative industries; it’s an archetypal platitude. It’s as flat as placing a flag on a gallery floor or burning another in a comedy show. However, those two cases were quite significant for changes in laws regarding the desacralization of flags in both sides of the ocean. In Norway, they were placed in 2008 but entered into force in 2015. I doubt that the desacralization of this particular flag is possible. While its definition in law may be secular, the coincidence of the proportions of the cross with the main Christian symbol makes this reading quite naive. When we mounted the urban intervention in Torggata, we received dozens of insults and threats, including death threats, despite the fact that none of the banners we hung was the Norwegian flag. Some people were really offended by how the Christian cross was affected or that it was shown as that of Saint Peter… Later, in Bergen, we received no threats, just the expected yellow press and its religious ink. — Without specific goals, but with many interests and a desire to avoid falling into clichés common to this type of venture, our very first exploration was to conduct detailed research on national flags and proposals within this region. Leading this task, I attempted to collect available information without physically visiting any place. This is something that anyone from anywhere should be able to do with the aid of some dictionaries, VPN and translation services, and of course, time. Over the past decade, we have learned a great deal, not just about Norwegian idiosyncrasies, but also about: • The history of pigments • The history of fabrics • Battle axes • How lions have been represented throughout history And so on. Did you know that lions once lived in Europe for centuries? A ‘Panthera Leo’ was a type of lion that survived in the area of Bulgaria until the times when Sun Tsu wrote this quote from an older military book, the origins of which remain unknown: ‘Ord kan ikke oppfattes, defor bruker en gongonger og trommer; en kan ikke se hverandre, derfor bruker en bannere og flagg.’

‘The Art of War’ is at least 2,500 years old and provided us with a clear idea on how to continue with our series. Firstly, we aimed to collect original information or a reference closest to the date of a selected fact, and then arrange everything following a simple timeline. We also decided to not write a single word and to avoid translations or corrections of any text. A selection of the information we collected was presented in two explorations: a website (the initial one), and a publication (the latest one). Both of them introduce all the other explorations we made, so I won’t expand on that here. We sifted through thousands of publications at online libraries from diverse countries, perused countless websites and photo archives, and reached out to national archives and various specialists and institutions. We received digitizations and images made on demand and even spent several days deciphering old letters in handwritten gothic. It was like playing a very nerdy board game. We were very fortunate to receive answers and comments from Jan Henrik Munksgaard and, more recently, from Jan Oscar Engene. However, we regret not having had a Sami partner with us throughout the process. It was quite challenging to find information online related to military flags from 1905 to the present day. But a few days before offset printing these ‘proofs,’ doors opened at a public institution, and we met some friendly people who shared files, prints, and a folder with copies of a few documents. These papers helped us clarify that concealed part of history. However, it is still far from complete. Nevertheless, we also arrived at some proposals that we had never seen before. Speaking of obscurantism, we couldn’t find any documents, dates, or information on the visual artist who changed the design of the Royal standards around 1995. This change was never registered in public offices. We paid special attention to how artists worked with the national flag throughout history, from the most submissive to the most subversive. With all the information that we collected, we created our own interpretations. • All of our drawings of flags and proposals follow the way official flags are presented today, with flat design, plain colours, and simplified and scalable illustrations. • Files are vectorial but made for the website, publication, and exhibitions of the series. Thus, all details were simplified for small sizes on digital files, prints in paper, and in fabric. • We defined proportions with information from resolutions or data we collected on how flags and fabrics were made at each time. • In some cases, we removed waves or angles of visual representations for calculating a possible proportion. • We avoided adding contours or outlines. • Colors were the most complex part and our choices are far from reality. • In the publication, you will find golden details here and there. • NO DRAWING ATTEMPTS TO CREATE AN ULTIMATE TRUTH, so handle them with care. • When a flag was not available or partially available, we researched diverse sources to generate them. • We also studied representations of symbols in diverse media, giving priority to symbols expressed on fabrics. For example, we used symbols from banners, stamps, maps, and coins, as in all those cases, we were able to check for dates. • All references on proportions, colors, and sources for our own interpretations are detailed in the publication. • Today, November 4th, a file with all those drawings is available online, and gratis with a ‘Creative Commons Zero license’ (CC0). Regarding the publication, on the first few pages, you will find all of our interpretations, along with official drawings of the current ‘rang and kommando tegn’ from the Forsvarsdepartement. Every drawing is arranged chronologically and includes a reference number. In the last pages, you can find hundreds of references that helped us create these drawings. All references are also arranged chronologically. This section includes other interesting information, as well as images and texts related to relevant artworks on the subject. And yes, between the drawings and references, you will find 750 personal flags. These collages were created with children at 45 school workshops in each county of Norway and Svalbard. On the end pages, we included a selection of words chosen by those children to represent Norway and themselves. National flags are more than just designs. They are charismatic totems that tend to be nailed to narrow narratives, with a paradoxical desire to unify while also dividing. Looking at them is similar to looking at stars: A twinkle in the present of a bright past. At least for some. We are looking forward to a day where flags are more dynamic and flexible. As the saying goes, ‘a critique seeking to go beyond the spectacle must know how to wait.’